This time there wasn’t any proper preparation, planning or marketing, and suddenly it’s here:
Riemann’s World, the self-titled album of the odd aleatoric, modular, mostly EDM-ish stuff that I’ve been doing for a year or so.
The Background
From April ’22 to April ’23 I worked on something that I did call “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.
I did a few videos on that, including some Erklärbär ones, so I leave those to you.
In a sense, this approach was on the same level as radical thought goes as my 00-years radical improvisational period: back then I played whatever came to my mind (and had no influence on it before it), this time, “the system” played whatever it wanted (and I 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 I do an 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. I repeat myself but: I’m an album person.
To did that work this time?
I opted to start out with the somewhat ambient-ish The hardest way to make one million dollars, a track which if I remember correctly 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 – I wanted 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, I’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 I 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 my Test Tracks pseudo album) was something where I 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 I had this simple melodic thing going on, serving as an opener.
Workshop with Walser is again a combination of two recordings, and although I liked each one (and like both of them together), I somehow couldn’t get them to take 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 that I performed in Riemann’s World (but there was another performance later that I did just before I disassembled 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? I’ll let you be the judge of that.
With all that being said:
Enjoy!
Feel free to drop a comment or a review (in fact, I’d very much like that).
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