BESTATTUNGSINSTITUT - ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS

Cassette, https://tribetapes.bandcamp.com/

Sigmar Fricke is a name we don't see too often, which is a shame. He is an artist who resides between musique concrete and post-industrial with an impressive footprint in the early days of the cassette culture. At least, that is where I recognized his name from after I was introduced to him musically by fellow Dutchman Land Use. Bestattungsinstitut is one of the projects he was most active in within the 80s and 90s, while nowadays it's mostly the highly experimental Pharmakustik.

In '93, he released "Posthumous Cremation" tape on Drahtfunk Products, the label from Klaus Jochim, who we remember from the highly active project Telepherique. "Alkaline Hydrolysis" - yet another method of discarding the body of a deceased person - is a rework of this almost 30-year-old tape. Fricke uses tape loops which he combines with added (modular) synth sounds, field recordings and heavy manipulation of mentioned sounds.

The result is two 30 minutes pieces of sonic bliss, a combination of drone, experimental ambience and minimalistic noise. It might not be something one would expect to be released nowadays because the glory days of 'cinematic isolationism' are behind us. Yet it proves my point that there absolutely is a market for this kind of music because GOOD music is timeless.

Listening to these tracks brings you into another dimension. There aren't many albums that have had this effect on me, but one of them is T.A.G.C.'s "Burning Water", even though that one has a much more minimalistic approach by choice of sounds. Transdimensional Ambience ... Is there such a thing? "Alkaline Hydrolysis" sort of dictates there should be: The exchange of the temporary for the endless, from the body into dust, from silence to sound, or maybe the other way around. This is one beautiful release, as timeless as death itself.