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LP
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DLC 014LP
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Superior State is the second Leitmotiv Limbo album released by Port Adelaide's De la Catessen Records, after the 2022 CD Spiritual Disturbance. This time, Leitmotiv Limbo's isolationist studies have been bumped to vinyl, which feels like the perfect format for these twelve miniatures. The project of Adelaide artist Elijah Värttö, Leitmotiv Limbo has, over the past few decades, tracked a history of quietly insistent experimentation, embracing several technologies -- invented instruments; analog filters; drum synth -- to sketch desolate, cavernous structures, sometimes performed in reverberant spaces, such as church halls, which gifts the recordings a ritualistic air. For Superior State, Värttö is more intently focused on rhythms and pulses, resulting in a beautifully sculpted collection of poetic vignettes. You can hear some trace elements, here, of the minimalist techno-not-techno of artists like Pan Sonic, or Studio 1/Freiland, in their reductionist ethos. But also, in the insistence of Värttö's attention to detail, and his careful focus on a delimited number of elements, the twelve pieces on Superior State recall the work of mysterious German outfits Werkbund and Mechthild Von Leutsch, or the solo explorations of artists like Asmus Tietchens, Achim Wollscheid, and Goem. It's intensely evocative music, recalling all kinds of phenomena, both man-made and natural: electricity pulsing through wires; the humming of the central nervous system; the quiet hiss of deserted computer laboratories; the pulsations of plant life; the molecular vibration of atoms. Värttö has tapped into the poetry of the programmatic on Superior State, and he's sharp in his grasp of the significant effect that the incremental shifting of a few simple parameters can have on the overarching structures he's building here. Indeed, that poetry is echoed back in the beautiful liner notes by Adelaide artist Michael Hocking. Alive, flickering with incident, Superior State is energy transmitted, coursing through the collective's veins. Edition of 300; hand-numbered.
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CD
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DLC 009CD
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De la Catessen Records presents Spiritual Disturbance from Elijah Värttö's project Leitmotiv Limbo. Currently based in Port Adelaide, Australia, Leitmotiv Limbo has developed, slowly but surely, over the past few decades, through international travel and relocation, including five years in Estonia (2008-2012), where Värttö set up the Servataguse Muusika concert series. Spiritual Disturbance was recorded in 2020 and released privately as a small run of recycled cassettes -- this CD version is the first widely available Leitmotiv Limbo release since their 2018 split cassette with RNPno2 on Finnish label Hyster Tapes. Central to the Leitmotiv Limbo ethos are Värttö's self-made instruments, built from discarded, repurposed, and found objects, such as loose springs and other metallic implements. Affixed to wood sourced from a disused and dismantled piano frame, their deep resonance, both percussive and timbral, positions Värttö's approach within a trajectory of instrument builders/creators -- you can hear echoes of the music of artists like Z'ev, Hal Rammel, and Rod Cooper in the shattered textures and industrial drones of tracks like "Submersive", for example. There's also a tactility to the performances here, a haptic resonance, and a strange, viscous sensuality to the material. Värttö recorded Spiritual Disturbance in a church hall in Adelaide, on a four-track, using room mics and direct line input, and it's made up largely of one-take performances on Värttö's self-made instruments, with minimal intervention, at times, from analog filters and a drum synth. The combination of the evacuated tonalities of the instruments, plus the cavernous reverb of the recording space, gives Spiritual Disturbance a distinctly ritualistic sensibility; poetic and primitive, but eloquent in its exploration. It also brings to mind mysterious projects like Organum, Morphogenesis, Metgumbnerbone, perhaps even an acoustic Voice Crack, where conceptual rigor meets unpredictability via real-time improvisation. Spectral and haunted, Leitmotiv Limbo's Spiritual Disturbance is a compelling collection of oneiric expression, and an eloquent articulation of a unique, invented universe. Includes four-page booklet; edition of 300.
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