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LP
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AVM 078LP
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Re:Polyism is a track-by-track reinterpretation of Friedrich "Fritz" Brückner's 2022 debut solo album as Modus Pitch, Polyism (AVM 074LP, 2023), through artists affiliated with Altin Village & Mine and/or former collaborators of the prolific Leipzig-based musician and producer. Each track from Polyism has been remixed or reworked by different artists such as Modeselektor, Angel Bat Dawid, Maya Shenfield, or Mouse on Mars member and HJirok producer Andi Toma, but the album -- mastered by Tim Roth a.k.a. Sin Maldita and released as a strictly limited vinyl LP with reimagined artwork by Carmen Orschinski -- follows the original record's tracklist. This makes Re:Polyism a veritable musical prism, refracting the creativity inherent to Brückner's genre-transcending original works through other people's artistic lenses to create an even more colorful end result. First off are the Gebrüder Teichmann with their take on opener "Drive," carefully adding more depth and uncanny sounds to the jazzy, drum-focused piece. Unsurprisingly, Modeselektor go a lot further with their remix "Rainbow," turning the two-minute track into a dubstep-adjacent banger with infectious synth work that is twice as long and comes with a mind-melting breakdown. With their take on "Hilltop Jacuzzi," Peaking Lights turn the blissful original into a piece that calls to mind experiments at the intersection of dub, ambient, and industrial music in the mid-1990s. Cloud Management radically transform the eerie "Compound Eye Dialogue" into a rhythmically charged mid-tempo post-krautrock epic, while the Seekers International's "Jelly Roll Dub" of "Gelée Royale" uses the original's lush textures to turn up the intensity even further. On the flipside, Andi Thoma gives the intricate synth pop/breakcore fusion of "Suspender" a similarly dubwise treatment before venturing into gqom territory. Maya Shenfeld then brings her trademark modular synth work to "Outer Veil," accentuating the focus on Hendrik Otremba's uncanny spoken word performance even further. This sets the mood perfectly for vocal experimentalist Agnese Menguzzato working her singular magic. Under her hands and with her voice, the multi-layered ambient soundscapes of "Lava Fans" become even larger-than-life-like than before. When Angel Bat Dawid takes the menacing drones of "Iridescent Path" as a template for a trap-inspired beat over which she lets loose on the clarinet, that serves as both the ultimate counterpoint and perfect coda to Re:Polyism. These nine reinterpretations of the highly diverse source material underline Brückner's singular approach to music-making while also emphasizing their makers' idiosyncratic talents.
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LP
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AVM 074LP
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Leipzig-based musician, engineer, and producer Friedrich Brückner has, despite his youthfulness, been a decisive figure in the Leipzig music scene for literal decades, being involved, in one way or another, in many, if not most notable releases coming out of the city. Having received a classical musical education, Brückner most recently figured as part of the German-American band White Wine, playing the bassoon and bass, but has also, as either musician, producer or sound designer, toured internationally with the likes of Yoko Ono, Get Well Soon, Modeselektor, or Dear Reader. For a few years now, Brückner has been working on his solo debut, which now comes in the form of his remarkable Polyism, on Altin Village & Mine. On it, Brückner puts his considerable musical chops to use, in the service of a rollercoaster of an album that truly eschews categorization, being, as its title suggests, a work of being multiform. While the sound takes wide ranging cues from jazz, new age, dub, electronics to post punk, Brückner's compositions never feel accidental in the slightest. Instead, they share a distinctive sense of dramaturgy, a pronounced attention to sonic texture, and a sense of purpose both within the individual pieces as well as in the context of the album as a whole. The result is an LP that is astonishingly coherent, considering the multitude of means it employs. On Polyism, Brückner also enlists a veritable all-star cast of guest performances, ranging from his parents Isabell and Bernd Brückner, both professional musicians, on saxophone, clarinet, and flute, Martin Wenk (Calexico) on trumpet, to Hendrik Otremba (Messer) and Brückner's four-year-old daughter Rosa both on vocals, to name but a few. Each lend their own notes to Polyism, a work of what it means to live, that is, to be many.
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