David Wallraf — Crisis and Critique

David Wallraf is a prolific German soundscape artist, with dozens of releases on their Bandcamp dating back more than ten years. Crisis and Critique is a thirty-five-minute album of modern cinematic soundscapes on Mike Patton's Ipecac Records, with brooding melodic themes carried by guitar, horns and strings, and many percussive sounds created using stringed instruments, and a careful arrangement of dramatic gestures. There are eleven tracks, despite the short runtime, and most of the songs are short, each flowing seamlessly into the next. There is a long list of session musicians contributing everything from bass clarinet to zither, and instrumentation varies widely from track to track.

The music is soundtrack-like in a similar sense to Trent Reznor's "Ghosts" series, where one or two repetitive riffs with carefully selected tones and tasteful FX provide a space for subtle sound textures to emerge. Brooding, dark dub bass guitar might remind you of Bill Laswell's various contributions to Tzadik releases or Trevor Dunn's work in Fantômas. Indeed, this album has a resemblance to Fantômas' Delirium Cordia, in that it meanders through various dimensions of electronic ambience and instrumental playing, with only a chilling coldness and a sense of vague forboding to connect the different ideas.

Throughout the album is a surreal, arcane atmosphere, with a dusty, castle-like reverb, and haunted funereal melodies. The most abstract, such as "Chemosynthesis", wouldn't be out of place on Naked City's Absinthe, with its microtonal prepared violin percussion and desolate cathedral ambience. The characteristic 'twang' and pluck sounds in many of the melodic figures indicate that Wallraf shares his labelmates' love for Ennio Morricone.

These are compositions with tremendous depth that unfold quite efficiently. This is an expertly crafted album that should please those itching for new material from groups such as Fantômas. With its colourful wealth of instrumentation and gothic elegance, it is where the world of Ipecac intersects with gothic ambient, as one might hear from a label like Cyclic Law. An album worth playing again and again.