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R-N 140CD
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Winterreise is the audio soundtrack to a series of photographs with the same name produced by Atom TM. The series was exhibited during 2011 in Tokyo and Frankfurt (excerpts included in the packaging of the Winterreise CD edition). The Winterreise soundtrack may be considered a sequel to the Liedgut (R-N 099CD) album, in the sense that the resulting photo series was conceived as a consequence of the contextual framework which Liedgut both initiated and provided. Winterreise, though, is a far more abstract piece of work, with its accent in soundscapes and textures. With a balance between the romantic and the scientific, this album evokes, not just accompanies, the visual aspect of the Winterreise project in a perfect manner, by painting grainy sonic images that visualize the tradition and the future of the romantic subconscious.
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RI 066CD
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"For all those of you who faced slight problems concentrating on the music supplied on Rather Interesting's previous release (Muster), now, here comes something more concrete and digestable: Music Is Better Than Pussy -- in fact a title that doesn't need much of an explanation. The music on this album itself reflects the title pretty well, as each of the 5 tracks explores musical themes in a very pure and straight-forward manner, using fairly well-known sonic codes. The tracks, each between 6 to 14 minutes in duration, deal with repetitive, polyrhythmic structures, glued together by steady kickdrums, an element one doesn't hear very often on a Rather Interesting release! Tracks such as 'Your Ambition', 'Value Is Nothing' or 'Tanzfläche' develop powerful rhythmical themes over layers of textures and sequences, while other titles ('Clicktrack', 'Suck My Groove') deal with the funk itself. A subtle leitmotif of Music Is Better Than Pussy are short, partly sung or spoken vocals that appear on almost all of the tracks. For those of you who care about words, the lyrics can be found on AtomTM'S myspace blog: www.myspace.com/atomtm. Music Is Better Than Pussy coherently connects AtomTM's own musical past, present and future, and introduces a giant retrospective of his work that will consist in his entire(!) Remastered audio catalogue being online soon in 2010, the year in which he celebrates his 20th release anniversary."
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RI 065CD
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"Muster, the German word for both 'example/sample' or 'pattern', welcomes us with an artwork that shows baroque garden ornaments, photographed from orbit. This 50 minute piece of permanently evolving structure and sound is a complex, well-thought and thoroughly crafted composition which is in fact inspired by the phenomenon of the ornament itself. Muster in this sense can be understood as a large, meandering ornamental pattern or rhythmical figure that, most of all, does not refer to, or reproduce any musical structure heard so far. On Muster you won't find melodies, harmonies, words, a message or reference to existing musical styles, since the accent was laid upon the development of the musical particle (one may call it 'atom' :) ) itself: rhythm and its sonic elements, being in permanent flow. At the same time this complex block of sonic information may sound 'orbital' to us - a musical structure as conceived by a being not from this planet: an alien observer. While this work can be considered as a leap forward in atomTM's creation, it may resemble some of his earlier works, such as Schnittstelle, The Disk Orchestra, Bund Deutscher Programmierer or CMYK, just to name a few, while it certainly shows that those works where just a step towards a far larger picture, which atomTM has begun to paint now. Matured as a composer, atomTM may indeed quote himself on this masterpiece, while he stands fairly alone in a vast desert called 'electronic music'."
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R-N 099CD
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This is Atom TM's (Uwe Schmidt, Señor Coconut, Atom Heart) debut full-length release for the Raster-Noton label. From a contemporary point of view, Liedgut may be considered a Romantic work. While researching his own past, the artist found himself in the Austro-German time, space, and way of thinking and feeling. Between Nietzsche, Helmholtz, Schubert, and many other guidelines, Atom TM absorbed a universe striving for clarity and simplicity, where science and irrationality, ornament and mathematic purity were the key elements of a (still) oscillating social and mental order. Liedgut therefore oscillates between those poles: scientific exercises on Schubert chord progressions, digital waltzes and romantic lyrics. This research consistently led him to the post-Romantic works of Oskar Sala, Kraftwerk and others, who could be seen as direct heirs of the Romantic movement. Upon completion of the album, Florian Schneider of Kraftwerk contributed a spoken epilogue, commenting that the leitmotiv of Liedgut lies in the track called "Weißes Rauschen" ("White Noise"). For Atom TM, the phenomenon of "white noise" perfectly served as an analog expression of the Romantic dualism: scientifically defined on the one hand, it is also described in a poetic manner, seeking for a more profound meaning. "Wellen und Felder" ("Waves and Fields"), which directly connects to "Weißes Rauschen," similarly refers to both scientific models and philosophic/poetic ideas. Consequently, Atom's research does not stop here, thus managing to convey Liedgut into the present. Both form and content appear to be explicitly new and contemporary, yet "ex-temporary" at the same time.
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RI 064CD
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"After a rather silent 2006, RI is back and fresher than ever! This is the long awaited Atom TM full length album, charismatically entitled Son of a Glitch. The title in combination with the most disturbing artwork in music history very much is self explanatory: it's funky, it's glitchy, it's nasty, it's funny and highly complex at the same time. Way beyond what critics often misunderstand as an ironic or just humouristic soundscape, Atom TM demonstrates with perfection that his music escapes any sort of superficial categorization. Whenever you think 'it's just been a joke,' you're confronted with wisdom that is dressed in the most funky arrangements and most horny complexity. Atom TM himself introduces the album with a spoken word section, insulting no one more or less than you, the dearest listener. Spoken or sung vocal elements in English and German lead throughout the album. Last but not least, the album features the guest appearance of Audiocrip, Mikrosopht and Original Hamster."
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12"
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RISQUEE 010EP
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"Who could have been more appropriate as a guest on Musique Risquée than mister Uwe Schmidt himself, man of a thousand faces and one beige suit. I'm sure like Clark Kent he has seven of them in his closet. Also like Kent, Uwe Schmidt bares a secret identity. The mighty Atom Heart who has been rescuing our ears and heads for two decades with some of the craftiest, freshest and most diversified electronic musak ever. This time, Sir Atom TM has reinvented our good old wheel, and replaced it for one that squeaks and skips for better mixing accidents. The humoristic piece on the B-side 'Insulting the DJ' is in fact the ultimate DJ testdrive for those who like to cruise at 200 kilometres per hour on a gravel road next to a cliff. For the adventurous daredevil DJ in you, or simply for those who enjoy music with an edge and a dash of humor. For the safest Sunday deckdriver, the A-side proposes a four lane asphalted road. The piece 'Form Swallows Function' keeps the pedal to the metal while slowly evolving into a deep and hypnotic journey on a lost highway. Many people out there could claim they've reinvented the wheel, but only one man rethought it everyday of his life. The music speaks for itself. Atom has done it again. The wheels are in motion."
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LI 007CD
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"iMix miniLP is his first solo outing under the Atom TM guise since 1996, not to mention his first album for Ryo and Miho's Berlin-based Laboratory Instinct. Presented in his inimitable and unique Atom style, Schmidt brings da funk on the rocking dance-club outing iMix miniLP. Over the course of seven sample-heavy tracks, Schmidt distills stylistic traces of his various aliases-Señor Coconut's spicy rumbas, Flanger's mutant space jazz, and Geeez'n'Gosh's spindly click-hop-into lush slices of sexy acid funk."
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