Drawing from the well of Christian icon painter Andrej Rublev, the audio and visual movements harbored within Silence, the first work produced by Rechenzentrum in four years, does indeed seem infused with the mysterium tremendum, the fear and trembling before that inaccessible other who sees and regards without Himself being seen, which marked the tradition under which he was working.
The music begins wispy and transparent, built around careful and episodic structures, punctuated at dramatic intervals by doomy reverberant splats of synthesizer, starchy strings, and the zither-like strumming of piano strings. There is a ritualistic force and focus to these pieces, even as the landscape of fragmented scrapes and whispers take on crunchier, more abrasive edges. Additionally, the cryptic black-and-white imagery that generally accompanies this type of piece acts as another layer of skin, leading to an increase in the sense of mystery while simultaneously furthering themes of purity and simplicity.
This is antagonized in a festive yet fierce way by other epicures of texture and rhythm, with pieces of grizzled, saw-toothed industrial colorings, and yet others under the spell of house music. These compositions insist on a technological virtuosity, one that borders on gimmickry, but which aids them in sprouting out in more quizzically surreal directions. Furthermore, they better reveal Rechenzentrum as insatiable explorers of music's hidden corners and twisted shadows, shadows that rub up well against the other pieces, conferring on them each a more defined shape and sense of motion.
Just as the album seems to be on the verge of disappearing into the electronic mountain range that builds up near the final few pieces, it quite delightfully swirls off into the lugubrious mournfulness of a New Orleans-like funeral dirge, replete with a deep male singing voice and spidery, linear horn patterns. A good many implications for religion in an age of digital recycling are thereby touched upon, as Rechenzentrum process traditions into so much sawdust and let them rest in powerful patterns.
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