The first part of Peter Rehberg and Ramon Bauer's trilogy, 1997's Fa t , didn't impress me much. There were some isolated moments of inspiration, but the majority of the album's induced clicks, hums, and whispers failed to leave a memorable imprint. What follows is an incredible assembly of sounds that you're simply not likely to hear anywhere else.
Vicious blasts accompany brassy drones, churning mechanical innards, and piercing frequencies.
The thing moves along at impossible speeds, in places chewing up sounds in sequences that cannot be followed, in others emitting frequencies barely audible to the human ear. There are periods when the self-regulating compositions pause as if to reset themselves, running diagnostics after alarm sensors are triggered. Indeed, the physically taxing moments might very well be defense mechanism against a more acute understanding of the music's internal logic. More so than Fa t , there seems to be a grand design at work here, an unknowable intent which makes of the makers' motives a much more insidious curiosity.