Introduction
Artist: Emil Klotzsch
Title / Release Page: Sandkorn
Release Date: 2005 Jan 14
Genre: Electronic / Glitch
License: CC BY-NC-ND
Media: MP3
Pricing: Free
Label: One
Rating: ★★★★★★★★
Welcome to another Throwback Thursday review. This week we look atEmil Klotzsch: Sandkorn. It’s difficult to imagine that this release has been out for ten years already. It seems as fresh listening to it today as it did when I first heard it. What’s more amazing is Sandkorn is Emil Klotzsch’s first release. Given the level of sound design and the maturity of the song writing it would be easy to believe that this was the fourth or fifth release from Emil.
Emil Klotzsch: Sandkorn
However, given that Emil had been involved in music for several years prior to creating Sandkorn, it’s not completely without precedence that an artist could make an extremely strong first statement. However, it is interesting to note that his previous music work had been in a punk band, and playing violin and saxophone (not in the punk band, though).
Finding this release early in my Netlabel travels, I was taken aback by the way in which noise and rhythm were not just played off each other, but integrated into a single unit. Quite a few of these tracks left me with the impression that this was an organic process. Klotsch had found the rhythm in the noise and accentuated, made it into music that makes your body want to move, it enhances the listener’s awareness of all the sounds around him / her.
This was the work that early music concrete composers might be either fascinated with, or horrified by. It was a way of approaching noise in the real world that many musicians around this same time tried to achieve, but were flaccid in comparison to this work.
But, it’s not only the noise and rhythm of this work that stands out. The musicianship is there: solid piano harmonies, and melodies. From the opening of ‘whidrek’ it’s obvious that Klotsch isn’t just throwing a bunch of sounds in the air to see where they land. This is music that is solidly crafted.
The result is an album that makes the listener feel wistful. Allows you to lavish in it’s rich sonic imagery, with being flashy or over-indulgent. And, occasionally there are nods to other electronic music geniuses. For example, on ‘everyhwere Is shut’ the vocoder style vocals bear a striking resemblance to the work of Kraftwerk.
Conclusion
It was all of these elements coming together and forming a new type of sound that made me an instant fan of Emil’s work. It was also the idea that a lot of his inspiration came from landscapes, such as on his 2006 release Tiefe Berge. To this day, Emil’s work stays in my collection because it has an element that is just timeless, and can be enjoyed at any time.
