“Täuschung” reviewed by Music Emissions

A massive essay on memory and forgetting, “Taschung” is a thirty one track set assembled over four years by Electroacoustic artist Davor Mikan. The struggle to remember the purpose of some of the pieces, why they were recorded, what was the initial inspiration; given that context, the pulses and drones and sonic waves represent the rise and fall of ideas and other thoughts. Two of the pieces are called “cleaning my graves,” and that is as good a clue as any into the theme. Do the tracks themselves stand up on their own, aside from the artist’s written explanation of them? Yes and no. the modal changes and continuous pulse suggest tension and ambiguous resolution, but then again, so does and electroacoustic and noise music. These tracks hint at space and silence, and are broad enough to insert any emotional context, by the listener or by the musician. All music, to a degree, tries to made some sense of chaos. Mikan uses external chaos—his written explanation of “Tauschung”—as a way to make sense of the music. Is that a conceit, or an honest attempt at saying that, in part, the artist has no idea what is going on here, and is frustrated and turned on by that? Davor Mikan welcomes that debate

Mike Wood