Michael Trommer — Berlin Anamnetic
The booklet that accompanies the record includes spectograms for each of the six tracks which gives a good visual indication of the density of sound for each piece. Unfortunately as the spectograms clearly show tracks 1 and 2 have very little going on aside from slowly building and very quiet mid-range drones. After around ten minutes of barely audible sound the volume does ramp up a bit and the listener can discern some flickering elements behind the diffuse wash of smudged sound and the occasional rise and fall of some sub-bass. This pattern is repeated throughout the first two pieces which amounts to nearly thirty minutes. Even when turned to a substantial volume there is little here to suggest the sense of the body's "real movement through a landscape" that Trommer highlights in his notes. If anything the experience is more like lying down in a quiet country meadow.
The third track retains the soporific background hum but at least the field material is allowed to shine through a bit more. Oddly though what we hear for most of the piece is somewhat tropical sounding bird calls hardly indicative of a sojourn though an urban environment. Later in the piece some almost rhythmic processed elements are added to the mix which at least provides some variation to the almost static flow of the music which finally in combination with the drone which at the end rises to an almost choral timbre approaches something like a crescendo. The forth piece revolves around a more hollow metallic drone with shortwave interference and steam-like sounds rotating in the foreground. The variation in tone (and a bit more volume) is welcome but time again Trommer seems to abandon a promising combination of sounds only to fall back into the barely audible and repetitive fug of uninspired drones.
The fifth piece finally brings more variation and reaches into the resources of both the electronic and field recorded material. Again it's built around the drones but here we have a palpable sense of being in a specific place that could possibly be an urban environment. We can hear bells, may be the distant sounds of construction or an underground railway, more plaintive bird song and all this within a wider range of tone colour and spatial arrangement. The sixth and final track begins positively with a good depth of sound and skeletal rhythm which morphs into what could be rain or heavily processed industrial goings on but as so often on this record just as it gets interesting the sound drops down again to those familiar minimal drones. At one point a truck audibly moves across the mix and I feel like I should applaud such is the scarcity of events offered up to my ears. I'd like to say the record goes out with a bang but it doesn't. Trommer returns to the uninspired drone shorn of any reference to his subject matter and the whole thing slowly fades out.
It's worth remembering that this suite of tracks was designed for a sound installation presented via an eight channel system. I can well imagine that in-situ the effect of this music would be very different. However what we have here in stereo and on CD is nearly 80 minutes of dull vaguely ambient environmental music that seems to opt for the worst of all worlds in how the material is handled. The electronic elements are simply derivative and uninspired, a fact that might be forgiven if the wealth of field recordings Trommer must have collected were deployed effectively; they are not. All the field elements have been flattened out so to hover in and around the drones with nothing at any point rising above the dull background hum. Add this to the fact that for the most part it is birdsong that predominates the material then to call this a research into urban environments seems at best miss-selling the work.