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11 July 2013

Frank Bretschneider: Super.Trigger (Raster-Noton)

Frank Bretschneider does a complete 180° from his last album, Kippschwingungen, released not long ago on Line, for this latest outing on his own Raster-Noton label. Exploring his repertoire, Bretschneider often seems to veer sharply from the rhythmic to the purely abstract, though he does occasionally land in the middle. Super.Trigger is by nature a rhythmic album, with a liveliness and spirit that is nowhere to be found on Kippschwingungen or his older Mille Plateaux albums, all of which are quite good in their own right but much more staid and severe. Instead, the playful spirit of his 2010 album EXP or 2007’s Rhythm comes through loud and clear here. Highly detailed and syncopated sequences of drum samples, sliced and diced, skitter in and out of his signature glitch aesthetic. But I dare say, some of Super.Trigger is downright funky — a word I never thought I’d associate with Herr Bretschneider. “Over.Load” has a special swagger with its snippets of voices and tinny snares that bob in time, and “Flicker.Funk” has it right in its own name, with synth zips that are as close to a wah-wah guitar as anything on Raster-Noton is likely to get. “Machine.Gun” has a nice chunky broken beat groove to complement its skittering sequencing, probably my favorite of the bunch. Despite its playful nature, Super.Trigger falls right in line with Bretschneider’s tendency to focus on a sonic concept for an album; Rand was on the vanguard of the clicks and cuts trend, while EXP was a curious foray into free-jazz-tinged glitch. Super.Trigger shows off Bretschneider’s knack for rhythm deftly, one of my new favorites of the year.

Buy it: Raster-Noton Store | Boomkat | Bleep | iTunes | Amazon

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