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CD
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TYPE 085CD
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Since Porcelain Opera (TYPE 077CD), his debut for Type, U.S. noisenik Jeff Witscher aka Rene Hell has put out a whole series of collaborations, 7"s, tapes and splits. Looking to his love of classical minimalism, Jeff took it as the starting point for this new record. The result is a deeply electronic rendition of a classical electronic formula; the digital and analog synthesizer and drum machine sounds that brought Porcelain Opera to life are reframed and transferred into a very different compositional structure. The Terminal Symphony is Jeff's attempt to write tighter, more composed pieces of music -- something of a reaction against the glut of long, often-flabby drone compositions that have become a mainstay in the scene. The pieces here are short, concise, and packed full of ideas that can take multiple listens to unravel, and the album as a whole is almost obsessively structured and complex. Each side of the record is composed very specifically with a beginning, middle and an end, and when we begin with the familiar grunt and grind of "Chamber Forte," it is only mere minutes before the track dissolves into the main theme of the album. An appropriate enough comparison might be arch-recluse Aphex Twin, but there is no pandering to dance music culture here. Rather, Jeff has used his enviable background in noise, punk and synthesizer music to come up with something totally removed from the current Kosmische revival. The album comes to a close with the hauntingly melancholy and purposefully referential "Adagio For String Portrait." The dancing synthetic blips that pirouette across Witscher's mournful electronic waves not only re-enforce the decades-long love affair between electronic and classical music, but help to define it in 2011.
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CD
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TYPE 077CD
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Rene Hell is the latest and possibly greatest moniker of U.S. noisenik Jeff Witscher. Over the last handful of years, Witscher has made a name (and possibly a cult?) for himself under a plethora of different pseudonyms exploring various disparate styles. He has been known as Impregnable, Secret Abuse, Marble Sky and as part of Roman Torment and Deep Jew, among others, and now he's settled on Rene Hell. With this project, we find him focused on synthesized kosmische sounds -- but unlike many of his contemporaries (Emeralds, Oneohtrix Point Never etc), instead of delving into nostalgia, there is something decidedly modern about Witscher's compositions. The bubbling, effervescent synthesizer sequences and percussive patterns seem to twist and turn over each other with a near-techno precision, and at times you might be forgiven for thinking that Porcelain Opera had more in common with Basic Channel than Cluster. Porcelain Opera is an album made by a consummate music obsessive, and Witscher is just as obsessive about his composition as he is his influences. The album's tracks seep into each other like viscous lava, decomposing and reforming as the track markers fade and re-appear. This is pure electronic music -- songs created with analog circuits and half-baked patch cables, dusty cassette tapes and greased-up potentiometers. And despite his noise roots, there is something distinctly sparkling about this collection of tracks. "Prize Mischief Hold" fizzes and cascades from the speakers like a box of illicit Chinese fireworks, and the album's glorious centerpiece "L. Minx" thunders through an electrical storm to reveal glorious, warming harmony. Electronic music has been much maligned in recent years and its contemporary rediscovery seems almost too rooted in kitsch to be taken seriously, but Jeff Witscher's synthesizer gospels are more than just a flash in the pan. This is analog exploration at its best, and once it digs its rusty talons into you, it refuses to let go.
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