LUKAS SCHOLLER – at land

(CDR/download – Mahorka)

Lukas Scholler is one member of Tupolev and part of the thriving Mödling scene. On this solo mini-album he conjures up some steadily flowing, evolving scapes of ambient noise that are more akin to being lost adrift on the sea than “at land”, but associations are not trustworthy and should be checked closely before using them. When having reached full size the best way to describe these multilayered drones is dense. Scholler seems to be looking for layers of sounds he may stack on top of each other the way those arab salesmen stack their carpets into their tiny salesrooms. From the outside all you see is a lot of carpets, but it is easy – and welcomed – to go inside, take the stacks apart and check the textures, colours and sizes of the single layers. Finally it might be this balanced opposition between density and looseness that sets these tracks apart from the mass of likeminded soundscapes flooding the internet.

This balance between tightly packed sounds and the ease with which they open up their most microscopic parts to the listener is true for the easier and softer tracks as well sas for te harsher, more brutal noise tracks and for those that have some rhythm as well (by the way, I want to hear these subsonic bass noises on the fourth track on a really massive PA somewhere.). And also where he uses vocal samples e.g. of radio transmissions and especially where the surface tightness seems to brush off closer inspection. A trick to reward the insistent listener, maybe?

Imagining Scholler at work, I see him with headphones on, deeply concentrated, searching for a balance between constructing sounds by a definite plan and according to a principle on the one hand and by letting it all lose and waiting for it to fall together in perfect harmony by pure chance. There is no valid argument to judge between the two, what’s more important is to have located the source for the constant balancing of oppositions and maybe even contradictions. For instance aforementioned bass-sounds are played against a massive backdrop of an enormous wall of sound somewhere between a feedback in a rock stadium and a 100 ton bulldozer only bigger. Rarely have I heard pure sound-experiments so not-abstract - apart from fieldrecordings and the like, of course. In a way, being abstract is easy; to convey meaning and sense in abstract terms is really hard.

At only 20 minutes the five tracks are over pretty soon. Some of them are really short, beneath the one minute-line, which is a pity – and an argument for the respect of Scholler – because other musicians would have dragged these soundscapes over the full length of a CD and made them into five separate releases. Some of the tracks would earn the epic format, but that is not my decision to make. But I would like to have heard more of the subtle structuring of those tiny dots of sounds at the beginning of the record. And then I don’t want to stop my noise meditations after twenty minutes.

This release sets Scholler apart from the rest of the Mödling crowd and their after all still song oriented approach within all kinds of projects and records as the most extreme sound-constructor in their circle. (Which makes me anticipate that compilation on 12rec even more.) A noise badge of courage.