Frank Bretschneider - Sinn + Form [Raster-Noton 157 Promo]

Having announced Frank Bretschneider's most recent album project "Sinn + Form" both on these pages as well as via the Psychedelic Kitchen Blog a few weeks ago we're pretty thrilled to review the full album as the theoretical approach behind the whole album is a quite fascinating one. The sound source behind "Sinn + Form" is a system of modular synthesizers triggered by a randomly generated data set influencing parameters like pitch, volume, tone and others - to cut things short, feeding the system with random data, supervising the likewise random or at least unpredictable result whilst trying to influence the whole thing in terms of aesthetics through improvised change of parameters etc.. The final outcome of this more scientific approach towards sound generation is a dazzling array of non-repetetive complexity where shrieking sinewave bleeps meets digital clicks, alarming electronic feedback loops - especially to be found in the nerve wrecking "Free Market" - as well as some random sweet melody bits and highly amusing tongue-in-cheek twists for those loving their Clicks'n'Cuts from the heart. Surprisingly there's even a slightly, yet abstract dubby feel to be found in the deep rhythm foundation of "Funkstille" whilst the alien'esque bleeps and pecking sounds of "Data Mining" and "Wave Of The Week" seem to sonically depict a variation of exotic interstellar communication - remember that weird extraterrestrial pet thing appearing in John Carpenter's "Dark Star" ?  If you do and at the same do approve of complex dynamics in experimental compositions whilst knowing and appreciating the sound of early electronics created at places like the BBC Radiophonic Workshop or Cologne's WDR Studio For Electronic Music "Sinn + Form" might be your album of choice these days to expand your collection. But also aside from this we reckon that  "Sinn + Form" is about to appeal to a wider audience these days as - after years of DAW-based production - we've seen a decent revival of interest in modular systems lately so "Sinn + Form" might also be used as a reference and inspiration of what to get from Buchla and Serge Analog synthesizer systems soundwise by new modular fans and users.