Here's where the Rune Grammofon label can make book on truly being the ECM of this century. Where else might one find a former Krautrock-aligned experimental guitarist working side-by-side with a contemporary cellist/sound mangler? The label is fond of pairing seemingly at-odds folks together to see what'll stick: in this case, it's fourteen "Stück"'s emerging out of the rubbing of various strings, diodes, software and knobs.
Not to belittle the first two volumes in this increasingly invigorating series (though apparently this one will be the last), but Low Tide Digitals III might well indeed prove that the third time's the charm. Guitarist Archetti has a background that stretches back to the 70s halcyon days of German prog/psych music, having spent time as a member of hippie freaksters Guru Guru and making all kinds of innovative electronica with the more diverse Tiere Der Nacht. Both he and Wiget share common goals: how to moor their respective instruments to a quasi-recognizable context while simultaneously bashing and thrashing about numerous idioms to forge unheard-of vernaculars. This means that the pair stretch your ears in all manners of vibrant and amusing ways: bending pitch, warping harmonics, treading the fine lines between ambience and noise, trading on old standbys like distortion just to make sure their audience is awake and paying attention. As might be deduced, much happens here, and to be caught in the duo's wake is to be seduced by their astute processes.
"Stück 24" opens up the environment with an Archetti guitar twang that courts resemblance to a horror flick soundtrack, Wiget craftily sculpting lines of distortion and peaking, red-line electronics that course underneath like a Stygian undertow. Conversely, "Stück 26" is a thing of abject beauty, the duo's fingerplucking marshalling a plaintive, laptop ambience that is as much about the silence between digital curdles as the curdles themselves. "Stück 27" augurs a Metal Machine Music for the modern age, at least until Archetti and Wiget realize that while momentum rocks, restraint can be just as galvanizing. The closing "Stück 37" actually reveals the recording in microcosm, Archetti's stately airs playing vividly around Wiget's poised chords and sun-flecked electronics, the guitarist occasionally rushing across the fretboard to provide a sudden dramatic emphasis. Superb.
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