How time flies. It’s already been 5 weeks since I reviewed the previous Modelbau cassette, and I thought I missed a few. It turns out Frans had the flu, so hence the delay … Just kidding, of course, but I am always eager to listen to new material by Modelbau; frequent readers will know and – if you’re not a frequent reader – just try going through the archives by the search function. There are almost 1500 editions, with some 10 to 20 (say 15). That’s a total of 22.500 reviews. And only 84 of them contain the word Modelbau. And that’s not even everything he released, I believe. So, we can safely state that there is more to discover.
This time, it’s again a cassette titled “Time Lapse” in beautiful DIY packaging with various types of recycled paper. Two tracks cover a whole side of the tape, with a playtime of about 24 minutes. And both in the style we’ve grown accustomed to. Deep rumbling drones with more than enough happening to keep your brain working. The music can generally be seen as tapestries with slow movements, loops by delays or tapes where slow sounds are added and layered until the attendance of previous sounds are taken over by new iterations of themselves or different ones and meticulously built from nothing to something to nothing again.
“Dead Man’s Eyes” is relatively ‘stable’ in composition. With that, I mean to say that a lot is happening, but everything that IS happening seems relatively uniform. There are no extremes, no different notes, and many fading in and out into various states of sonic balance. The first half sounds slightly raw compared to many other releases, making it edgy somehow. “Dream Lover” starts with a slow pulsating resonant tone with an additional pulse wave pulse. It’s entirely synthetic for Modelbau standards, but maybe we’ll find out why during the rest of the track. It’s not long there, although … If you listen carefully, there is always a faint presence, and it’s only to return in the end. It’s almost like breathing by the one next to you on which you concentrate just before trying to sleep. And suddenly, you realise you are asleep, and you’re dreaming. And after your dream, while you’re waking, you realise the breathing is still there … Who knows, that’s just my interpretation.
It’s a lovely cassette release on a label that offers more of them. Check out their BandCamp to see if there’s something for your taste.
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