Label: Creel Pone CP 199.7 CD

謎多きドイツの学者Max J. Gmelchが残した1980年の唯一リリース作。コンピューターベースの音楽制作に集中的に取り組んだ音楽家でもあり、現在は本国のミュージカルおよび演劇協会の責任者を務めているという人物。その作風は宗教歌的な要素を孕んだ優しくも仄暗い異質の電子音楽であり、突如パーカッションなどのポップな生音インストゥルメンタルも登場。まさにミステリアス且つ不思議な感覚が残る一枚。大推薦。



The lone 1980 release by this German scholar (he taught at Ostendorfer Gymnasium where he created student-musicals with FX Müller and “dealt intensively with electronic and computer-based music production;” he’s now the head of the “Neumarkt musical and theater association”) toes the line between timbral exploration & staid Berlin-school trappings in a vaguely Christianic manner (much in the way Henry Sweitzer “Te Deum” set merged the era's hegemonic religious tendencies with transgression the year before).

There’s a cursory glance towards woollier lanes that rears its (ugly?) head in spots; honestly, this is what makes this all so special. One moment a plaintive, hand-played phrase will lull you into false soporificity, then suddenly give way to a rising swarm of detuned PWM locusts. The whole enterprise is teeming with little burbles of almost Birchall/Raicevician filigree while rising into these grand, orgiastic climaxes & there’s a certain palpable malaise throughout that hits the spot.

The missing link between Jean Hoyoux’s “Planètes” & “III Hymne”, Angel Rada’s glorious early LPs, & the glorpy woodland-elf magistrates of Bo Hansson et.al (i.e. it’s in the 199.x series for a reason). 6-panel “gatefold” booklet yields what little information is on the LP itself (it’s strikingly stark) in increasingly voyeuristic zoom-lengths.