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Thomas Brinkmann | Row

What do they put in the water over there?
CD, Max.Ernst/Lowlands

Tekst: Omar Muñoz-Cremers

Publicatiedatum: 15 december 2002

One is tempted to pose the old question: "what do they put in the water over there?" There in this case being Cologne, home of Thomas Brinkmann, which over the past years has become one of dance music's brightest spots. One of techno's more prolific producers, Brinkmann seems to be sceneless and therefore more able to produce different forms of techno: from his wildly experimental two-stylus-record-player dub to the techno archeology of funk that characterizes his Soul Center output. The music released on his own Max.Ernst label, here collected on cd sometimes in re-recorded versions, displays the full spectrum of Brinkmann's styles. For instance opener 'Corvette' is a sort of sound poem that would have enamored the Futurists. Although the sound of revving cars is clever (images of an empty arcade hall full of racing games practicing at night in the hope of making life miserable for humans the next day), it does start to grate after the first listen. Elsewhere, as on 'n.m.q.p.' and 'Mexico' Brinkmann experiments with voices, often repeating just a syllable for a stretch. It is a trick that looks superfluous in the age of extravagant cutting as proposed by Akufen.

Some of the more notable work on Row consists of the three 'max.E.3' and 'max.E.4' reworks. The first version of 'max.E.3' is a subtle slice of minimal dub techno, which seems to validate Brinkmann's fascinating comparison of a good techno track with architecture from Ancient Greece: "You have the columns – these are the hook line – then there's the roof, the stairway that leads you into a large room. A good track has a room as well, though much more virtual." After reading these words one can't help to actively search for this room in Brinkmann's track. It's there on the second version of 'max.E.3'; a lovely space of subtle clicks and rhythms in the same vein as Farben; it is huge on the compilation's best track 'Loplop' (well-known due to the prominent place it was given on Richie Hawtin's DE:9 Closer to the Edit mix), a building track in the spirit of Robert Hood with its use of Eastern percussion and soft, simple melodies. Although afterwards nothing comes close the splendor of 'Loplop' and in the end Row does appear to be an uneven collection, there is a host of interesting ideas to be found in these tracks that, as with a lot of Cologne techno, effortlessly cross the divide between dance floor, art gallery and living room.

http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/thomas-brinkmann/row/2129/
Meer Thomas Brinkmann op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/thomas-brinkmann