“Täuschung” reviewed by The Wire

Vienna based Mikan’s broken english is strangely helpful in highlighting the existential and creative confusion that informs these 31 short pieces, conceived using graphic tools and granular synthesis. “After four years, the distance to this music is completely lost,” he writes. He cannot recall what emotional spasms gave rise to these knotty, fragmented scrawls of abstract electronic music, despite searches through his notes and correspondence. Certainly, the most effective and distinctive aspect of Täuschung is the way in which pieces disappear abruptly, drowned in infancy, after less than a minute sometimes. Several tracks are barely titled, while others are more vividly monikered: “Das Gewitter hat sich in eine Bahnhofshalle zurückgezogen”. It’s as if, to misquote Satie, these are the sonic memoirs of an amnesiac.

David Stubbs

“Täuschung” reviewed by Cyclic Defrost

The thirty-one tracks on Täushung betray a nest of family resemblances, but they are lost on the one who, using graphic tools and granular synthesis, gave rise to them in the first place. Some four years later, the atmosphere, as it were the corona of lightly indicated uses that accompanied their first gesticulations now appears foreign, incomprehensible yet dangerous, like a veiled threat.

Hence the caution, care, and confusion with which Mikan arranges and manipulates the music. For a good part of the time he dwells in a conflicted state. At one end of the spectrum, he wants to decipher and find a certain intimacy with the material. This is evidenced by pieces in which Mikan tries more overtly to mould and tease the material into tense, angular shapes. When this is done, however, certain other pieces don’t fit, the elements never gel, and the compositions appear as a bit of plastic surgery gone awry – thick, droning white noise and mulched electronica echo and bounce off of one another in innumerable ways; loud cascades of swirling sound slashed and cut up by clashing frequencies. At the other end, Mikan approaches them as unapproachable, communicating directly but at a distance, adding and dissolving motifs in the miasma’s so as to bring out their enigmatic quality. With “Flimmer”, for instance, he does very little, stalling the structural flow, and allowing the underlying electronic sounds to rise to the surface.

Mind you, outside of this narrative, the ideas don‘t exactly remain fresh at every turn – however little, its spirit wilts when unlit by this light source. Mikan carves out a number of paths within this space, though, and the bracingly gritty alliances that are formed assume many expressions, displaying varying degrees of translucency.

Max Schaefer

“Täuschung” reviewed by France Musique, Tapage nocturne

Davor Mikan est un musicien autrichien d’origine bosniaque, il fait partie de ces expérimentateurs sonores radicaux qui composent sans aucune concession pour nos capacités auditives. Le label Cronica édite courageusement aujourd’hui son deuxième album. Intitulé Täuschung, il présente une suite de 31 vignettes sonores principalement constituées de distorsions, de déflagrations, de déchirures, de silences et de grincements. Une épreuve ou un ravissement c’est selon mais la qualité sonore de l’ensemble est assez remarquable et la très courte durée de chaque pièce permet de reprendre notre souffle entre deux upercuts. En voici un deux extraits le premier, Glattes, fait partie des quelques compositions soft de l’album, le second est intitulé Gespenter und Lippenstift, Ein Kompletes Drama et relève plus de l’expérience sensorielle que de l’écoute traditionnelle.

Eric Serva

“Täuschung” reviewed by Spex

Davor Mikan hätte vielleicht gut daran getan, nicht jedem der 31 Stücke auf »Täuschung« (Crónica) einen Titel zu verpassen: Man sollte sich jedenfalls nicht von einer etwas witzlosen Albernheit wie »Der Eisverkäufer explodiert einfach« von dem Vorhaben abschrecken lassen, sich mit diesem durchweg interessanten, zuweilen sehr spannenden Album auseinanderzusetzen. Was auf den ersten Eindruck oft wie pures, anarchisches Geräusch erscheinen mag, steckt hier nicht selten voller witziger, abrupter Überraschungen, die dieser Musik genauso viel Geist wie eben Chaos attestieren. Als Mischung ist das in besonders gelungenen Augenblicken natürlich ganz unverschämt verführerisch. Obwohl stilistisch sehr unterschiedlich, lässt sich »Täuschung« übrigens ganz hervorragend mit dem letztjährigen Longplayer »Geisteswissenschaften« von A_dontigny vergleichen, der auf einem ähnlich rätselhaften Charme basierte.

Kai Ginkel

“Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom” reviewed by Distorsom

Com um título fisgado na realidade intangível das partículas sub-atómicas, Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom é o sétimo álbum dos portugueses @C, e o terceiro na sua própria editora. Os ficheiros que estiveram na origem do disco foram registados entre 2002 e 2007, em diferentes locais espalhados por vários países, incluindo apresentações ao vivo, field recordings e trabalho de estúdio, e também na samplagem de outros músicos que com eles se cruzaram em estúdio ou em concertos. O CD reflecte essa diversidade na sua proposta sonora e na estrura pouco convencional. Dos quatro temas que o compõem dois destacam-se pela alta minutagem: o primeiro, “62”, com cerca de 20 minutos e o último, “61” com o dobro dessa duração; entre eles dois curtos interlúdios, “71” e “72”, que não chegam aos 2 minutos. Num processo de composição que os próprios autores compararam ao trabalho de escultura – no modo como a parte interage com o todo – ou com a fotografia – na opção do enquadramento – o álbum pôs questões sobre modelos de realização, formatos, e a própria essência do que é expectável num CD – no fundo, um objecto que se torna em música cada vez que é tocado. Não se contando entre os nomes mais conhecidos na área do microsom, o duo de Miguel Carvalhais e Pedro Tudela tem dado contribuições importantes ao género, e Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom não é, nesse ponto, uma excepção.

“Mus*****c” reviewed by Earlabs

Since January, 2003 Crónica has managed to amass thirty-one releases in its catalog. Now, to celebrate their 5th anniversary, the label’s thirty-second release comes in the form of a free, digital-only download that initiates the beginning of the Unlimited Release Series. Mus****c is a 192-minute, 24 track compilation featuring almost as many Crónica artists. It’s one more instance of the label’s publishing strategy that is focused on “the dissemination of electronic culture” with a special interest towards the distribution of significant electronic/experimental music.

Listening to broad compilations such as Mus****c has its rewards. Not only do you get to hear first-rate sounds from some of your favorite electronic/experimental music artists, it also brings to your attention the music of artists that you might not have never heard of had it not been for the compilation. In the case of Mus****c, I’m only familiar with about one-third of the artists featured here (Janek Schaefer, Lawrence English, The Beautiful Schizophonic, Paulo Raposo, Marc Behrens, TuM‘, Gintas K. and Freiband). In a way it’s like opening an old antique trunk that‘s been stored away for awhile. Not only do you get to rediscover some old memories, you are also provided the opportunity to make some exciting new discoveries (@c, Gilles Aubry, Ran Slavin, Mosaique, paL, Heitor Alvelos, Audiodigest … to name a few ).

So what can you expect to find here? Just about everything under the experimental electronic music umbrella – microsound, scratchy glitch, melodious electronica, readings, vocal experiments, field recordings, manipulated insturment samples, processed piano melodies, dissonant collages, abstract noise, harmonious drones, orchestral ambiance, intense percussive experimentation, etc.

Some of my personal favorite tracks on Mus****c would include Janek Schaefer’s Broadstairs Children’s Piano Trio – which is perhaps the simplest and most unassuming of all of them. Schaefer refers to it as a “innocent little piece” and indeed it is. It consists of looped piano segments extracted from an old 7” and softly textured with a layer of nostalgic vinyl crackle and wear. Also included would be three beautiful ambient pieces: Mosaique’s Tapis, Ran Slavin‘s Summer Clouds, and TuM‘s Sea n° 4 . Tapis consists of cathedral organ recordings whose tones are recursively processed and layered into gorgeous, undulating drones while Summer Clouds is a thick, hazy, cinematic panorama of sound detailed with processed guitar and reversed melodies. TuM’s Sea n° 4 is a stunning piece of shimmering melodies, misty textures, and melancholic atmospheres.

Two vocal-based works have kept my attention. Paulo Raposo’s A Bag of Water features a voice-reading of a work by French writer, philosopher, and literary theorist Maurice Blanchot accompanied by some rather disconcerting electronics. Music for Lonely People contributed by Jorge Mantas, The Beautiful Schizophonic, begins with a young woman’s spoken lament that gradually evolves into a very melancholy and stirring ambient soundscape.

Lawrence English delves out some impressive Musique concréte born of ocean recordings on A Certain Death by Drowning. Splashing ocean waves, recording workings on a ship (grating machinery, hiss and drone of an engine), and some added electronic textures all work together to provide a very saturated ambiance.

For those who might relish some abstract noise variations, Pure’s 643 and Marc Behren’s Website would be good back-to-back listening. Pure’s piece is filled with distorted, cacophonous noise and bent, discordant tones that rise and fall while Behren’s twittering work is glitch in the truest sense – fragmented, noisy, and machinelike. Still noisy but, in addition, warped and shadowy, James Eck Rippie’s Black Tranmission, Pedro Tudela’s Op1s2sm, and Durán Vasquez’s Segunda Natureza (Noite) traverse twisted, darker paths. If your cup of tea is dense, grating ambiance based on room acoustics, then Gilles Aubry’s s6t8r should be more than enough proof that empty rooms aren’t necessarily quiet.

And if this isn’t enough: If you’re up for some driving percussive madness, then Heitor Alveos delivers with his O Corpo é que Paga. As an antidote to this unrelenting piece, o.blaat‘s Snark and Carmel tempers things with some minimal noise, shrill fequencies and scratchy textures. The first half of Gintas K‘sExcerpt from is a fairly potent rhythmic piece that transforms into a beatless composition of electronic sounds and real instrument samples. paL’s shezalready5 manipulate a child’s voice transforming it into some jittery vocal jazz. The duo @c shows two opposing sides of their approaches to sound art and electronic music. 73 is, at the same time, noisy, glitchy, gritty, and abstract while 68 exposes an orchestral/classical ambiance. Vitor Joaquim‘s The Devil is in the Detail is mesmerizing soundtrack music – looped samples, layered with instrumental melodies and vocals, cycle endlessly. For more beautiful, repetitive strutures, Gigantiq’s post-rock tinged A Few Steps from Your Should is sure to please. Also included on the compilation are compositions by Freiband (Frans de Waard)and Cem Güney.

In addition to the excellent music found on Mus****c, the label has also kindly provided links to information about most of the artists in addition to notes from many of the authors themselves concerning their particular contribution. There’s also a PDF that provides the artwork, notes, and track list.

RATED: 10 / 10

Larry Johnson

“Mus*****c” reviewed by Vital

The older I get, the more melancholic I get, the faster time flies by like there is no yesterday, today or tomorrow. Is it tuesday again, am I doing yet another Vital Weekly. It seems so. So in my perception of things Cronica Electronica have been around for ages, but they celebrate their fifth birthday with an online present. No less than 192 minutes of music (which would have been three CDs in real life, but I assume they don’t want to end up financially broke from such an affair) and I was wondering when ever they released some of these people. The older I get, the more I tend to forget. Surely I remember Janek Schaeffer, Ran Slavin, o.blaat or Marc Behrens but erm, Heitor Alvelos, James Eck Rippie, Cem Güney? I don’t seem to remember. If you would be looking for a good compendium of todays electronica boys (and some girls – counting one here only), a bit like Mille Plateaux used to do with their compilations “Clicks & Cuts” and “Modulation & Tranformation”, but then updated to today’s standard, this is a very good place to go. None of the artists seem to have send it throw away pieces, “since it’s only an online compilation” and many take advantage of the medium to sen in long pieces. Güney has the longest with fourteen minutes, but also @C, Freiband (who sound like a microsound remix of Electric Light Orchestra), Pedro Tudela and Vitor Joaquim go well over ten minutes, while others go easily for six. Autodigest’s merely one minute is pale. As said this is a pretty good compilation with music from the low end fields to the loud noise of Alvelos, from chirpy techno like music and the full on abstract. A great party bash this one. (FdW)

“Musicamorosa” reviewed by Onda Rock

Fuori dagli schemi e dai consueti circuiti della musica elettronica, l’artista portoghese Jorge Mantas da qualche anno a questa parte conduce le sue esplorazioni sonore sotto l’accattivante alias di The Beautiful Schizophonic. Dopo l’esordio “Hyperblue Hydrophonics” e la quasi totalità dei brani compresi nella pubblicazione “Product 06” della conterranea etichetta Crónica Electronica, Mantas pone mano a un’opera complessa e impegnativa, composta e suonata con il vario utilizzo di una strumentazione che comprende tanto drone e field recordings quanto tiepidi inserti acustici, cui è affidato il compito di riempire di romanticismo partiture ambientali evanescenti e modulazioni sonore ammantate da cupo fascino.

Fin dalla scelta del suo particolare alias, l’artista portoghese sembra amare nomi, definizioni e titoli eccentrici e di pronto impatto, tanto che egli stesso definisce la propria musica, tra l’altro, come “post-romantic drones”, “neoclassical laptopia”, “pastoral digitalia” e “warm glitch”. Al di là della loro astrusità esteriore, queste espressioni riescono a descrivere piuttosto bene i tratti di un suono che coniuga i solo apparenti ossimori di modernità digitale, sensibilità romantica e calda delicatezza acustica.

È proprio lo spirito romantico l’elemento portante di “Musicamorosa”, album che presenta tredici tracce dai suggestivi titoli in francese, dense di reminiscenze letterarie (alla “Recherche” di Proust in particolare), sottili richiami romantici ma anche passaggi di oscura rarefazione e di suoni lievemente destrutturati.

Attraverso variazioni di registro graduali e talvolta appena percettibili, Mantas si cimenta con abilità sopraffina nell’utilizzo di drone impalpabili, che scorrono a creare onde tenebrose, solcate da inquietanti glitch (“Zephir Marin, Feerique Comme Un Clair De Lune”) o costituiscono il substrato per gentili note acustiche (“L’Eternel Matin”, “L’Eternel Matin”) o, più spesso, cesellano paesaggi di dark-ambient emotivo e mai opprimente. Le dilatazioni di fondo si ritraggono poi come flutti silenti nelle appena percettibili intro di molti brani e nell’ovattato raccoglimento che fa da unico contorno alla suadente declamazione di passi proustiani da parte della sorprendente voce di Colleen (“La Lectrice”, appunto); più spesso, tuttavia, il proscenio viene lasciato a field recordings e modulazioni di frequenza, costellate di screziature elettroacustiche che trovano libera espressione nei tredici minuti della conclusiva “Soixante-Quatre (@C Pour T.B.S.)”.

Ma l’apice di intensità è raggiunto dai due brani nei quali più toccante è il malinconico romanticismo di Mantas, ovvero il lento crescendo dell’iniziale “Un Etourdissant Reveil En Musique” e soprattutto la magnifica (fin dal titolo) “Un Jardin Encore Silencieux Avant Le Lever Du Jour”, che parte con delicate note di xilofono, che preludono a una parte centrale di “ambient orchestrale” tanto raffinato ed emozionante da poter essere scambiato per una delle migliori composizioni di Eluvium.

Tra la levigatezza di queste composizioni e le tenui increspature affioranti qua e là nel corso dell’album, l’artista portoghese è riuscito a confezionare un lavoro denso di paesaggi sonori di delicata sensibilità e meritevole di collocarsi, a sorpresa, accanto alle più interessanti produzioni ambientali di un’annata già prodiga di pregevoli uscite nel genere.

Raffaello Russo

“Täuschung” reviewed by Vital

From Vienna comes one Davor Mikan, of whom I never heard, ‘where he creates music about failure, beauty, lust and delusion in the context of psychoacoustic effects and in a personal sense (self-delusion)’, as it is said on the blurb. He is using generative graphic tools together with granular synthesis to transform sound. Whatever that may mean, even when I think he uses sound software to transform work generated with software that is in general used for design. Which is not a new thing, as some programs do allow you to open a text or image file and then it will ‘read’ as music. Judging by the same what harsh, crude and loud music Mikan produces on ‘Täuschung’ this is the case here (unless he uses the ‘pencil’ in the audio software program to re-draw sound curves, which might give a similar effect). Thirty one tracks, spanning just over thirty seven minutes means that we are dealing with short pieces here. Very short but partly loud pieces. I don’t recall such a noise based release on Cronica, which I think is a good move. Noise, certainly when it’s done well, is the new main thing. Be it the crude, Merzbowian blasts of noise, the lo-fi noise of New America, the end of soft glitch seems imminent. See last week’s Josh Russell’s release and this week it’s Mikan. Maybe the pieces could move away from the sketch like character and grow into something more composed like, but otherwise this is a most promising start. (FdW)

“Täuschung” reviewed by Comunicazione Interna

In “Täushung” il viennese Davor Mikan ha riunito materiale elettronico elaborato nel corso degli ultimi 4 anni – si tratta di 31 tracce brevi se non brevissime – ed il risultato finale non lascia granché soddisfatti: un lavoro eccessivamente frammentario e sostanzialmente asfittico, dove entrano scarti digitali, frequenze disturbate, glitches manipolati, ritagli di forme ancora inespresse.

Gli spunti interessanti ci sarebbero anche – vedi lo squarcio profondo che si apre tra i solchi di “;o”, il respiro ansimante di “Eine Erinnerung”, lo sfasamento percettivo che introduce l’inaspettato urlo di “Der Eisverkäufer explodiert einfach”, il flusso corposo di “Ein Tag” – ma di spunti appunto si tratta, sporadici abbozzi lasciati incompiuti e non coagulati tra loro in un progetto coerente.

Guido Gambacorta