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CD
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R-N 166CD
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Senking follows his 2013 album Capsize Recovery (R-N 152CD) with Closing Ice, drawing listeners back into the depths of his musical creativity. The album's nine tracks are intently dedicated to Senking's distinctively bass-heavy and atmospheric compositions, forming trips into the dark recesses of the human psyche. The mid-tempo grooves leave plenty of room for his sawing, war-declaring sounds that unfold into expressive soundscapes, gloomy yet also warm. Every now and then, like a distant echo, a pacifying melodic fragment gives comfort and hope. However, the open and seemingly improvised songs always follow their inner musical logic. "Serpent" or "Lighthouse Hustle," for example, could indeed be interpreted as conventional arrangements -- in general, the riffs and melodies on Closing Ice are rooted in a profound tradition of rock and pop music. With Closing Ice, Senking delivers exactly what the title promises: a balancing act between danger, hope, and destruction, and an eerily beautiful companion into the innermost spheres.
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CD
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R-N 152CD
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Capsize Recovery takes the listener on a ride through a very dark universe of gloomy sounds and atmospheres. The eight rather longish tracks of the album are characterized by Senking's epic signature sounds -- creepy hovering bass lines, clean and slowed-down drums, paired with oscillating and sometimes fierce synth melodies and shots. With his extremely deep and dubby arrangements that explore the depths and abysses of bass heavy music, he again is able to create soundscapes that convey a subtle sense of unease or even fear, as if they were the soundtrack to a mysterious and disturbing film. Already the opener "Chainsawfish" reflects this perfectly. A minimalistic composition of droning basses and synth pad sounds is decorated by scary voice snippets that seem to be taken from a horror movie, which eventually evokes the uncanny feeling of being haunted. The track "Tiefenstop" -- a truly telling title -- is a continuation of this theme and can be seen as the lowest point of the journey where the bass is reaching ever deeper spheres. Again, voice snippets are used that intensify the hectic and stressful impression of the track, but here they are juxtaposed with rather positive and balancing melody lines. Besides the omnipresent mysterious atmosphere, the overall sound of Jens Massel's new record is organic and possesses a certain live character that can also be discovered in the last track. Senking, by the way, is also one of the few artists who creates his music without the use of a computer. "Enduro Bones" starts with a monotone beat to which single elements like echoes, synth sounds, and fragments of melodies are added. By means of repetitions and extensions, the track gradually becomes more dense and complex, and therefore it seems to be a song that is being created at this very moment. Senking's new record is an excursion into the depths of the human psyche. It's like the record is reflecting a difficult situation one can get into, as well as the struggle of getting out of it again -- hence the title Capsize Recovery.
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12"
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R-N 142EP
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With Dazed, Senking continues his exploration of the abysses of sound to create dark and gloomy atmospheres. The slow beats of the two tracks are accompanied by tender, harmonic melodies, but broken by nervous, unsteady tones. "The Dance Hall Walk" also features a vocal sample by Micheal Cram. Dazed is not only concerned with the depths of sound, but also with the depths of the human psyche, where there is no escape other than music itself.
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12"
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R-N 131EP
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On Tweek, Senking again reveals his sense of cineastic atmospheres and dark abysmal depths of sound, which are subordinate to extremely slow, choky basses and delayed beats. Tweek is meant to be a DJ-tool for a club environment. "Tweek" refers to a character on South Park, who constantly struggles with feelings of uncertainty and anxiety. This 12" documents the eagerness to experiment, with astonishing ideas shining through the dark substance. The tracks even reveal cheerful and comical features.
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CD
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R-N 077CD
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Originally released in 2007. Is there beauty in what is threatening? With List, Senking introduces 40 minutes of the darkest matter and reckons, yes. He varies and experiments with a -- for Raster-Noton -- frightening diversity of sounds. He reveals the pieces as sound-collages, as quotes, which seem to refer to splatter movies and film noir. Following the tremendous plot of his endtime-subject, he persistently welds together sound spaces in order to compress them later into overwhelming drone-sounds. These as such, then go to serve a fundamental purpose -- as an environment for minimalistic themes and melodies, always to be driven by the ever present slow-beat of the pieces. Nonetheless, the syntax, the destiny of each single piece is highly varied and has the appearance of a much more mature composition, compared to his earlier works. Remarkably, the technical aspect does not take a leading role in Senking's anti-utopia visions. It's about substantial and age-old patterns, about impulses and the inevitable. Comparable to a tracking shot, the sound masses are flowing grey and drama-laden towards their final purpose -- seeming to follow the ductus of the opening piece -- let's go.
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12"
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KK 012EP
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The third Senking 12" release, featuring four tracks: "Bones", "Thaw", "Ping" & "Harrigan". Collected along with the the Ping EP on the Ping/Thaw CD on Karaoke Kalk.
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