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CD
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MONKEY 077CD
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This is Gajek. This is 17. Come in, feel free. Don't worry if you see a flute in the sink. Matti Gajek's follow-up to his 2014 debut album Restless Shapes (MONKEY 053CD/LP) opens the floodgates to signals from a future best navigated by ear. Moving through polyphonic pulses, layers of grooves and sounds, zooming in-and-out of ever evolving patterns of concentration and decomposition, the ten tracks of Gajek's 17 are electrifyingly futuristic club music true to the almost five decades old motto of Berlin's Zodiak Free Arts Lab: Total freie Musik ("totally free music"). Paying tribute to electronic pioneers like Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Florian Fricke while staying clear of historical mystification, Gajek revisits the abstract clarity and improvisational audacity of 1970s electronics from a perspective firmly rooted in the digital now -- this is not '71. Today motoric rhythms emerge and elapse from post-digital aural 'scapes, intense and sublime, linking the thermodynamic to the ephemeral. Beyond the echoes of past utopias, 17 discovers present signs for possible tomorrows.
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LP
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MONKEY 077LP
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LP version. This is Gajek. This is 17. Come in, feel free. Don't worry if you see a flute in the sink. Matti Gajek's follow-up to his 2014 debut album Restless Shapes (MONKEY 053CD/LP) opens the floodgates to signals from a future best navigated by ear. Moving through polyphonic pulses, layers of grooves and sounds, zooming in-and-out of ever evolving patterns of concentration and decomposition, the ten tracks of Gajek's 17 are electrifyingly futuristic club music true to the almost five decades old motto of Berlin's Zodiak Free Arts Lab: Total freie Musik ("totally free music"). Paying tribute to electronic pioneers like Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Florian Fricke while staying clear of historical mystification, Gajek revisits the abstract clarity and improvisational audacity of 1970s electronics from a perspective firmly rooted in the digital now -- this is not '71. Today motoric rhythms emerge and elapse from post-digital aural 'scapes, intense and sublime, linking the thermodynamic to the ephemeral. Beyond the echoes of past utopias, 17 discovers present signs for possible tomorrows.
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10"
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IGR 012EP
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Micromanic is a colossal slab of percussive energy composed and performed by Berlin based Matti Gajek. Micromanic begins with tentative steps, which morph into a chattering electronic birdsong before giving way to an assertive, hammering bassline. The structure eventually crumbles into discordant noise and echoes, eventually giving way to something gentler. Gajek weaves a complex and varied narrative with absolute technical aplomb, resulting in an experimental and hypnotic recast of krautrock. He is also a member of New Composers Collective (NCC). Translucent purple vinyl, single-sided, silkscreened B side, Includes insert and photograph; Includes download code; Edition of 300 (numbered).
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12"
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MONKEY 060EP
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Relative newcomer Gajek remixed by two of electronic music's finest, Alva Noto and Plaid. Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto turns the playful "Restless Water Shapes" into a stone-cold dark bassline roller, welcoming the listener into a sonorous temple of solemn and serious dancefloor business with a pumping kick and resonating reverb. Plaid bring up the listener's oxytocin levels with bristling, euphoric electronica. Guaranteed to make you smile, this 12" is an extremely fulfilling, hypermodern club night compressed into just two tracks.
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CD
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MONKEY 053CD
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This is the debut release from Gajek for Monkeytown. After Chris Clark had passed some of Gajek's sheer endless output over to Modeselektor, quite a few listening sessions followed. Ranging from post-rock-y electronica to complex and moody renderings of intricate, introverted beat structures to mutant dance music, a whole audioscape had to be discovered. There were songs and tracks and experiments there, morphed vocals and reverberated non-human instruments, complex percussion patterns and sweet atmospheres, but in all these different paths and moods, a penchant for working with a leitmotif could be traced. As an introduction to expose his particular working method, a concept mini-album was carefully crafted. Filled with 21 short tracks circling around three main motifs, this record lays bare one of Monkeytown's new artist's main strengths. Working with variations of rhythmic elements, it seems like the three parts of this album tell very short but intricately-entwined stories equal to the miniature worlds contained in snow globes. They contain references to their larger musical counterparts in Gajek's other works, but shaken and stirred and sometimes snowed under. One is quickly drawn into this music, challenged to find the thread and follow it into its different outfits and scenarios. The first complex entitled "Curved Engines" evolves around a major scale played over two octaves with the exclusion of a few notes. Its friendly and simple melody is examined in every possible direction, almost like a classical minimalist piano piece. The second one "Restless Water Shapes" explores a repetitive rhythmic pattern, which evolves over the course of its eight parts, sometimes reminiscent of early Autechre, but combined with a more jazz-based approach. On its course, the pattern morphs from being played on actual percussions, to drone-y pads and sirens synthesized from vocals until it breaks into actual composed pieces on track 9, 12 and 14. Here, various of the afore-heard elements come together to form moments of extreme beauty and calmness while challenging the listener to come closer, hear more, better, finer. Complex 3 "Moving Glasses" starts like an overture to a digital "Zarathustra." Synthesized arpeggios sounding like a muted bamboo-harpsichord is interrupted by a syncopated beat swinging in an upside-down gesture like an exclamation mark. Some of the elements of the former complexes appear, culminating in a more orchestrated apparel. Where the other parts explore a musical structure, this one is devoted to (a) form. This form could be called "electronic dance music," if this expression wasn't already taken for the cheap mainstream rendering of autotuned four-to-the-floor. "Moving Glasses" offers the most apparent references to club-music in its various forms, ranging from hip-hop to techno but also finding its way back to ambient and electronica. You can consume this album without paying attention to the "concept" part of it, no worries, it is a masterfully-crafted piece of intelligent electronica that is as pleasant to listen to as it is thought-though.
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LP
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MONKEY 053LP
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LP version. Includes download code. This is the debut release from Gajek for Monkeytown. After Chris Clark had passed some of Gajek's sheer endless output over to Modeselektor, quite a few listening sessions followed. Ranging from post-rock-y electronica to complex and moody renderings of intricate, introverted beat structures to mutant dance music, a whole audioscape had to be discovered. There were songs and tracks and experiments there, morphed vocals and reverberated non-human instruments, complex percussion patterns and sweet atmospheres, but in all these different paths and moods, a penchant for working with a leitmotif could be traced. As an introduction to expose his particular working method, a concept mini-album was carefully crafted. Filled with 21 short tracks circling around three main motifs, this record lays bare one of Monkeytown's new artist's main strengths. Working with variations of rhythmic elements, it seems like the three parts of this album tell very short but intricately-entwined stories equal to the miniature worlds contained in snow globes. They contain references to their larger musical counterparts in Gajek's other works, but shaken and stirred and sometimes snowed under. One is quickly drawn into this music, challenged to find the thread and follow it into its different outfits and scenarios. The first complex entitled "Curved Engines" evolves around a major scale played over two octaves with the exclusion of a few notes. Its friendly and simple melody is examined in every possible direction, almost like a classical minimalist piano piece. The second one "Restless Water Shapes" explores a repetitive rhythmic pattern, which evolves over the course of its eight parts, sometimes reminiscent of early Autechre, but combined with a more jazz-based approach. On its course, the pattern morphs from being played on actual percussions, to drone-y pads and sirens synthesized from vocals until it breaks into actual composed pieces on track 9, 12 and 14. Here, various of the afore-heard elements come together to form moments of extreme beauty and calmness while challenging the listener to come closer, hear more, better, finer. Complex 3 "Moving Glasses" starts like an overture to a digital "Zarathustra." Synthesized arpeggios sounding like a muted bamboo-harpsichord is interrupted by a syncopated beat swinging in an upside-down gesture like an exclamation mark. Some of the elements of the former complexes appear, culminating in a more orchestrated apparel. Where the other parts explore a musical structure, this one is devoted to (a) form. This form could be called "electronic dance music," if this expression wasn't already taken for the cheap mainstream rendering of autotuned four-to-the-floor. "Moving Glasses" offers the most apparent references to club-music in its various forms, ranging from hip-hop to techno but also finding its way back to ambient and electronica. You can consume this album without paying attention to the "concept" part of it, no worries, it is a masterfully-crafted piece of intelligent electronica that is as pleasant to listen to as it is thought-though.
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