“Closed like oyster, the eclectic duo produces a sound universe totally devoid of innuendo to offer originality”
1 Reminder 3:27
2 Reductive 4:27
3 Recall 2:24
4 Retention 6:34
5 Remote 4:16
6 Reluctant 3:27
7 Redemption 6:41
8 Relative 3:21
9 Reception 3:05
10 Refuge 5:53
11 Refuse 3:43
12 Rebirth 3:26
13 Remainder 2:12
(CD/DDL 52:56) (V.F.)
(Dark Ambient, Drones)
A union Robert Rich and Markus Reuter can only give a surprising result. 11 QUESTIONS for 13 pieces of music, all starting with the letter R! One might think that we are swimming in full creative delirium where the fusion of two alchemists of sounds bubbles at the crossroads of their imaginations. Composed in a single week, 11 QUESTIONS is an album that must be listened to with an opening on a tribal cultural world where flutes subtly mingle with guitars in an enigmatic ambience.
Strange and dark titles like Reductive, the dark Remote which rumbles on ogress percussions, Reluctant, Refuse and the heavy Remainder, to titles more charming and always so dark. I think of Reminder, Recall, Relative and its vaporous jazz style, Refuge with a black nostalgia as well as Rebirth and its sweetness which floats on a six strings with sharp notes. Titles which arouse a strange spell. We can even hear titles with heavy and slow rhythms pouring into an unexplored sensuality, like Retention and its heavy bass, Redemption and its atmospheric wandering. In short, the musical territories are all visited there with an atonic heaviness which manages to attract an auditory curiosity. The voices, as well as the flutes, are superb and blend well with the strange musical scents of delirium that emanate from everywhere, like disturbing reverberations that mold themselves to the intense movements of the desert's rituals.
Destroying the myths of lifeless music on distress moods, Rich and Reuters succeed in producing 13 tracks, all equally strange one from the other, in a context of an indefinable artistic airtightness. Closed like oyster, the eclectic duo produces a sound universe totally devoid of innuendo to offer an originality that one does not hum but which contains ounces of melody which catches both the hearing and the senses.
Sylvain Lupari (November 30th, 2007) *****
Available at Robert Rich and at Iapetus Bandcamp