Voice Crack/Muller - buda_rom/Eight Landscapes

Voice Crack/Gunter Muller
Buda_rom
For 4 Ears
1344

Gunter Muller
Eight Landscapes
For 4 Ears
1445

Arguably the Most Valuable Collaborator on the electro-acoustic improv scene, Gunter Muller gives a representative account of himself on these two discs, even if they fall a good distance short of his finest work.

“buda_rom” was created in partnership with Voice Crack, the recently defunct Swiss electronics duo. It’s culled from two performances in Budapest and Rome in late 2000, the Roman shows re-mixed in shortish fragments and interwoven between longer extracts from the Budapest shows. Both Muller and Voice Crack (Andy Guhl and Norbert Moslang) share a tendency toward the rhythmic that’s often absent in this rarefied world, using looped sound sources to help establish a complicated drone. This provides the new listener a relatively easy way in even though more experienced listeners may get a nagging sense of the loops being used as something of a crutch (although, admittedly, they are usually quite seductive). Voice Crack’s sounds are generally of a rougher, gnarlier nature, a crunchy approach that lends itself to the build-up of thick, complex walls of noise. Muller is smoother, silkier, sliding his contributions between the interstices, making his presence known and important almost before you realize he’s there. The longer tracks inevitably work the best here, allowing the listener to bathe for a while, soaking in the sounds. If it’s not very different from other offerings from these musicians and not quite up to the standards set on releases like poire_z’ “+” on Erstwhile (which includes the same three musicians), it’s an enjoyable enough disc and well worth hearing.

“Eight Landscapes” marks the first time Muller has recorded as a solo artist and, while it is an attractive offering, shows why he might be better served as a collaborator with others. With nothing to act as a foil for his gentler tendencies, the pieces occasionally drift into fairly ambient territory, sometimes reminiscent of early Eno (though still with more grit but perhaps, on the other hand, lacking Eno’s wit). A rough edge appears now and then as on the second track where an unsettling, high-pitched buzz like that of a faraway saw slicing through metal lends an appealing harshness to the otherwise billowy background. While the music here is not, in a sense, very different from that which Muller creates in other contexts, there may be a subtle element missing, one that elevates it from perfectly fine work to something more. As with the prior disc, “Eight Landscapes” is by no means a bad recording; it’s attractive and even a little bit luxuriant. Somehow, I want to hear just a little more bite, something a bit more surprising and unexpected. Muller may have it in him to come up with this on his own one of these days, but for the time being, I hear it surface more often when he’s playing off the contributions of others. As a partner to musicians like Rowe, Otomo or Nakamura, he’s unbeatable.