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Rutger Hauser - Rutger Hauser [Adaadat - 2015]

Rutger Hauser is a 'noise rock' band, in the sense that their music is a cacophanous din.  In their case, to use of the term 'experimental' to describe the band would be to ignore the high school level musicianship possessed by the band.

The recording quality is harsh, trebley and unclear , sounding like a demo recorded in a garage on a cheap device.  This is a strange contrast to the rather polished and attractive glitch art packaging, with pleasant blue and bronze colors arranged into irregular repeating squares (which had given me high hopes for the album's contents).  The liner notes say it was recorded 'live at the EMS'.

in the first track "N-N-N-N", a rudimentary beat is pounded out ad nauseum, hesitant and rigid, tripping over itself.  The guitarist stairsteps up and down a pentatonic scale, clearly attempting to play to the drums but missing the beat more often than not.  Other sounds in the mix include wordless vocals yelling syllables like "oh-oh-oh", and what sounds like a tape recorder playing scratchy ambient samples, switching abruptly on and off.

"Sounds of Our Country", the 2nd track, is significantly more coherent, an insistent 'motorik' krautrock beat paired with a droning bass guitar, in which the sampling evident in the previous track is brought completely to the fore, a cut up of fragmented marching band music and vintage feeling Americana.  It has a certain atmospheric warmth, but goes on for a long time, nearly 10 minutes.

The 3rd track brings a slightly increase in musicality again, with a sketch of a haunted shoegaze sort of sound, an ambient tremolo chord from the guitar and female crooning vocals stating "Nothing was real...".  It isn't spectacular, but shows some understanding of tone.

Suddenly on track 5, "Red Detachment of Women", they decide to tighten up and play a riff.  The fried hard blues chords are stabbed in a jerky rhythm I would expect from Deerhoof or the Melvins, with a similar overdriven tone.  If they can play this way, why hold it back the majority of the time?  Track 6, of course, returns to a blatant lack of rhythmic cohesion.

The only really beautiful thing on the record is easily "Liquorice Pipe", a dreamy reverie of watery guitar, repeating a delicate and peaceful riff.  If only more of the record had this sort of ambient quality, rather than the sort of irreverent throwaway it mostly is.

These are surely intended to be freeform psychedelic journeys, drifting currents on which the listener can travel.  However, I feel the elements are too loosely related, the timbres themselves too dull, the audio fidelity unpleasant.  These musicians have placed too much faith in randomness, and their antimusicality feels lazy.  The band seems unwilling to focus or cohere, or simply needs more practice in order to clarify the most memorable aspects of what they are doing, and trim out the fat.  Out of an hour of meandering, there are only 2 or 3 decisively emotional and transporting moments.  As a longtime experimental musician myself, I've become somewhat jaded to the blind glorification of free improvisation.   I feel it must be done with serious intent and focus.

Rating: 2 out of 5Rating: 2 out of 5Rating: 2 out of 5Rating: 2 out of 5Rating: 2 out of 5

Josh Landry
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