
MK/CT - MK/CT [Fang Bomb - 2023]Chris Dreier and Tim Löhde (aka MK/CT) have been swapping musical snippets while no one was paying attention, bridging their respective homes of Berlin and Düsseldorf via a familiar motif in the field of experimental ambience and electronics: the movement of water. The Rhine and the Spree, but nothing in the titles or field recordings would point in an obvious way to this fact; rather, it is the fluidity of the compositions – their specific drift – that feels undeniably hydrous, for lack of a prettier adjective. What’s more, the way in which the individual pieces migrate from interiors like the robotic voice in an elevator on “MK7 Shieldfields” to the reverberations of that most conspicuous of field recording locales, the tunnel (“MK6 Tunnel”), we are certainly moving inside and out, without encountering much in the way of a border or solid boundary in the process. What does recur on the first side of this LP is a piano and said field notes, processed with the utmost attention to circularity and refrain.
It isn’t until the piano briefly disappears from the stage on the second side of MK/CT that we notice how important it was to the structural mechanisms of the open and abstract compositions, softening the shrill din of metal or the passage of mic’d air. Indeed, by the time we have arrived at the meta-titled final cut, “MK15 Ruminating”, we can be no longer certain that this porous membrane between sound and reproduction is any different than the one that supposedly guards between the world and the self. If such awareness constitutes some kind of victory, it is no doubt a pyrrhic one, for the overall mood of Dreier and Löhde’s labyrinthian compositions is as moody and unhinged as anything a metalhead might toss at you. The difference? MK/CT know just how to throw their tools so that you cannot ever duck before it hits you.
For those who enjoy field recordings and ambient, lo-fi improvisation all with a decidedly creepy bent. To find out more drop in here     Colin Lang
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