The Background
From April ’22 to April ’23 Rainer worked on something called “Riemann’s World”. In a nutshell, that was about somewhat portable modular synth things that played aleatoric stuff (and nothing else), and often sounded somewhat EDM-ish.
There’s a few videos on that, including some Erklärbär ones, for you to enjoy.
In a sense, this approach was on the same level as radical thought goes as the 00-years radical improvisational period: back then Rainer played whatever came to my mind (and he had no influence on it before it), this time, “the system” played whatever it wanted (and he had no influence on it either before or during the performance). It still sounded acceptable sometimes, that’s why there is an album. So…
What about the album?
As is usual when there’s a moinlabs album of music that is not composed, “making an album” means listening to recorded stuff (this time: roughly 20 hours of it) and then assemble it so it tells a story. As Rainer tends to say: I’m an album person.
So did that work this time?
Starting out with the somewhat ambient-ish The hardest way to make one million dollars, a track which if memory serves was played with Leopold, the most potent build within Riemann’s World.
Following up with Säuremischung, the title hints at its acid roots, and the system this was performed on was Granturismo, making this a very early creation in this world. The track is made up from two individual sources here (something we’ll revisit later on).
Laurens is a track with some intra-track editing – to make use of that catchy motif to open the tune. This track was known earlier as “Insulators”, which somehow explains the naming choice.
If this was an LP, you’d try to find ways to make A Blacker Shade of Dark the end of side 1 (and fail). This is the most evil track on the album, with Leopold again going bonkers as the performer/helmsman tried to steer clear of cheesy EDM.
You say it like it’s a bad thing is again something with interesting edits. The centre of the track (which used to be available as part of the Test Tracks pseudo album) was something where Rainer had started recording way too late, and couldn’t find a way to somehow edit this into a proper track start. Fortunately, there was Everett (one of the most abstract build in this world) where there was this simple melodic thing going on, serving as an opener.
Workshop with Walser is again a combination of two recordings, and although the artist liked each one (and like both of them together), he somehow couldn’t get them to tell a story. Hence, the title references a statement by the late Reich-Ranicki about Martin Walser (and his inability to tell a story).
Farewell to Riemann’s World was supposed to be the last track to be performed in Riemann’s World (but there was another performance later that was done just before disassembling all the stuff), and closes off the album in a down-tempo-ish thingie that only at the end adds some sparse percussion. Is that a good farewell note? You’ll be the judge of that.
Further Information
Background info on the blog. And on twitter.
How to get it
The album is available as a digital album download from bandcamp via the player, or directly here.
Download includes a nifty booklet, and lossless versions (FLAC) are in full 24/48 audiophile glory.
Credits & Acknowledgements
Lots of algorithms did the not-so-heavy lifting. The rest? Alles straschill.