PENDLER – you come to me

(CD, Karate Joe)

In Austrian lingo a “Pendler” is a commuter, usually with a longish drive necessary between workplace and home. The metaphor of the time between steady places, of shifting between two states of mind or at least to fixed places, is a very fitting one for the music on “you come to me”. It should not be forgotten, though, that psychologically the timespan spent for commuting is an interesting mix between a steady, stable and well-known place, like the inside of a car, a train cabin and so on, and the outside world flying by, ever changing and with time also becoming familiar and well known. The border between inside and outside, the non-moving parts and the fast-moving parts of the surroundings of the traveller, never falling and always being present. Commuter have a very regulated and strict schedule in their life, especially when using public transport. They also use the time to introspect, reflect and step out of the concentrated business routine also mentally. In some ways a regular train ride is like meditation or even trance, especially early mornings and late evenings.

Where does it fit to Pendler’s music? The trio consisting of Markus Marte, Sabine Marte and Oliver Stotz have produced an intriguing, inspiring and elevating album whose eight tracks all show a basic music structure consisting of stable and fixed blocks that are put next to each other with just that slight and easy grade of difference to effect a generous flow that comes more from straightness than an abundance of ideas. These blocks are lush and rich with flavors though, but they are also very dense and condensed, even when they are laid back and relaxing. In other words, Pendler have a big ear for the state and structure of a sound than for the evolution or change dynamic of a song. So theirs is the morphological programming rather than the phylogenetic development. Which shows itself also in the musically rather simple forms in regards to chord changes, almost monotonous melodies, that they take to extreme complexity without really changing them.

Take for instance the song “Good Job”, which is a post-post-whatever enactment of Creedence Clearwater Revivals legendary “Proud Mary” (“and no, it is not a redneck - vergreen, those Fogerty-brothers had long hair and were always sissy about the injuns and such, smoking pot too and against the war in Vietnam, fucking commies”) where they take some of the lines of the lyrics and freeze them inside the dissection of a guitar sound - the guitar being the most prominent and important instrument of CCR’s bluesrock – surrounded by more sounds and drones. And where the guitar solo happens in the original, there are more experimental sounds and clashes of sounds in their re-working.

Pendler seem to be taking to this kind of working up and away from a certain inspiration. I bet if you bore into them long enough, they’ll admit to some sources or inspirations for all or at least most of their songs. “The Saints” is as close as they will get to a cover version of the old gospel classic “When the saints go marching in”, though you’d wait in vain for handclaps and a full fledged brass section to start in. What you’ll get is washes of guitar and distortion noise. “Cathy Anger” leans heavily towards the kind of stories a certain Kathy Acker liked to pen and act, even spoken by Sabine Marte in the same cool and detached style.