Konrad Kraft — Temporary Audiosculptures And Artefacts

By using the term ‘audiosculptures’ in the title of this release, the elusive German artist Detlef Funder, AKA Konrad Kraft, prepares his listeners for an experience in which ones expectations of musical motifs, melodies, harmonies or rhythm are allayed in place of shapes, textures and densities in space. And yet, perhaps partly due to conditioning and partly down to Funder’s teutonic techno output in the nineties, one cannot help but find musical matter, particularly rhythmic, in many of the seven audioscupltures and two “proto sculptures” that follow.

Indeed, the first ‘sculpture’ is perhaps the most techno-like, formed of a central burbling rhythm whose pump and rigidity has been distorted and dampened to form a cycling conveyor carrying hi-pitched glitchy tones compartmentalised by metallic percussive strikes. The ensuing sculptures, while on the whole less regular, all seem to bear a similar structure: a totemic column of sound, more often an electrical surge or industrial drone suspended across the whole track, is orbited by an array of throbbing or tapping electro-acoustic objects to form snapshots of related, articulate atmospheres without beginning, middle or end. While these bear traces of the real world - from the dripping of water to what sounds like faulty pinball machines – all is sufficiently filtered to hone in on their textural properties while ensuring that the sounds lack too much by way of significance.

And the mood is wholly dystopian – grey clouds over derelict warehouses hosting faulty machines often come to mind as mechanical movements resist bad weather conditions. Which can make for a bleak and grey experience, but repeat listens allow the mind to gravitate away from those first impressions to arrive in a gallery of fictional structures formed in the mind, providing a stimulating exercise in dissolving associations.