Twd24
I enjoy this album because of the journey forward each frequency path takes. Each individual sound,pattern, recurring noise moves each track forward. It’s light and optimistic feel punctuating through the drone to the sunny blue fluffy nimbus cloud day. Favorite track: Minor Fragment.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
All digital and physical purchases come with the free Fragment VST / Audio Units plugin. Fragment download instructions are included with the album download.
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Cassette + Digital Album
Professionally duplicated and mastered for cassette.
Includes unlimited streaming of Less
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“Less was my most difficult album to make,” says Dominik Grenzler (aka An Moku). Frustrated by his lack of progress on a concurrent project, he turned to his bass guitar and his effects boxes, and over two sessions produced a kind of music that was a departure for him: “Less is an approach to Hauntology and drone like I’ve never done those before.
“Most of my recordings are only with the bass guitar and effects,” he points out. "I have used field recordings on "A better tomorrow" and "Blur" and have treated vinyl crackles a bit at the end of "Melancholia" so that they generated an electronic vibe. All in all you might be surprised how the bass guitar is able to sound and fool you being a synthesizer." Less is a textured, sensual audio fabric of electricity, the sound of voltage flowing through equipment, pushing against impedance, expanding into a sonic architecture of places: the sound of still life, objects, haunted spaces.
During the pandemic lockdown, he listened to hauntology recordings and wanted to direct his efforts at the genre, “somehow, with my own ideas. I wanted Less to be abstract. I wanted to limit myself and had to rethink. My limitation on this release was bass, a bunch of pedals on two pedalboards, some dusty vinyl crackles and a few of my field recordings."
This is something of a hardware album, a duet between Grenzler and his boxes, especially the Zoia modular effects synthesizer. He created a patch in the device “named ‘Melancholia,’ that loops, chops, and pitches down,” looking for a darker and more industrial bottom than in his other music. Out of that came the track “Melancholia.” The central “location” of the album, it’s a place into which the music directs the ear, a churning soundscape of uneasy memories and dramatic stabs of sensation. From here, An Moku guides the listener back out through the final track, “Absent.”
“I knew I wanted to let the bass sound differently,” he explains. “You hear walls of sound full of movement and voltage, but less of the bass. All in all it is less of everything.”
But less of everything, on Less, produces more. Like the natura morta paintings of artists like Giorgio Morandi, tracks like “A Better Tomorrow” and “Forgetting” seem to just turn on, there before our ears in the way an image sits before our eyes. Sounds hum and expand with the tactility of the vibrating strings of Grenzler’s bass guitar, the loops of voltage that run through his effects.
credits
released April 13, 2021
All tracks composed and produced by Dominik Grenzler (aka An Moku), autumn of 2020 in Zürich, Switzerland.
Thanks to my dear Sara Hochuli, Uwe Zahn (aka Arovane), my family and friends, Joel Gilardini, Stefan Schmidt, Stijn Hüwels, my supporters, and Micah Frank.
"Less“ was produced using a bass guitar, many effects pedals, some dusty vinyl crackles and a few snowy field recordings.
Artwork by John Whitlock
Mastered by Taylor Deupree at 12k
An Moku (Dominik Grenzler) is a sound artist, conceptual producer and former bass guitar player based in Zürich,
Switzerland. He has released music on Puremagnetik, Karlrecords, Dio Drone, Slowcraft Records, Bullflat3.8, Audiobulb and his own label Endtitles....more
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