Marcus Maeder | Quiconque
Domizil | CD
For some time now Swiss label Domizil has been exerting a stranglehold on the vast landscape of crystalline electronics. Their approach, which combines an eye for detail with a small, but talented pool of artists is slowly, but surely reaping well-deserved rewards.
Marcus Maeder's 'Quiconque' is ample demonstration of a talented and intelligent attitude towards contemporary electronica. Tearing at the edges of a fragmented sound palette, Maeder uncovers rare moments of beauty across eight largely shortform tracks, offsetting spacious binary crackles with distilled melodies to create a series of beautiful digital studies.
'Crkva' closes with a brief and delicate melody, the perfect counterpoint to the digital shimmer it rounds off; 'Matto' combines massed harmonic synthesis underpinning brittle and shimmering fragments. It's a template that Maeder works perfectly - a contrast of unsettled and abrasive digital ripples with momentary, but sublime melodic codas. Each track a balance of shimmering, heat haze electronics and cool, structured melody.
With eight equally vibrant tracks it's difficult to choose favourites, but 'Huffs' is one of the most sublime moments of electronics you can imagine. A fraction over three minutes it evolves from a scattered sound field of digital detritus to close with a sixty second moment of extreme beauty as a melody emerges briefly, only to collapse over one thousand action-packed milliseconds of sheer, sublime extravagance. Short, but sweet.
[CM]
