ANADOL & MARIE KLOCK — RENTRER À LA MAISON

Turkish sound artist Anadol (Gözen Atila) and French writer-musician Marie Klock have teamed up once again teamed up to create an upcoming album, Manivelles (May 15). The first single, 'Rentrer à la maison', also arrives in video form, a wonderous home movie-style affair in grainy VHS quality that very much fits the vibe of the song — the drear brick walls of the suburbs; driveways and gardens; dad is washing the dog.

Klock sings of the trials we face when confronted with that most comforting yet most alienating of things: returning home. How far we come only to arrive home again! Whether it's Christmas or someone's birthday or popping over for a cup of tea, to sit around the same table and hear the same stories and feel the same way as the child version of you all over again — a bittersweet tragicomedy (or comitragedy?).

With characteristic Klock humour, the lyrics for 'Rentrer à la maison', for the chorus at least, translate to

Whenever you go home
You start off with great intentions
And then, shove ‘em up your ass
Nice and deep, nice and deep

For some, I imagine that sounds about right. And with the vocal melody and the accompanying soundscape, the song has the melodic drone of a moralistic folksong or classic chanson, while during the verse the vocal skips over the lines like beat poetry.

Atila's instrumental work features time-worn analogue synth and thin drum machine beat, the kind of sounds that might emerge from a dusty childhood keyboard inherited from some uncle or another. It's as if the pair, one having accompanied the other to their parents' house, actively composed and recorded the song during such a visit, barricaded in a tiny time capsule of a bedroom and won't emerge until everyone has mercifully gone to bed.

✧

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• 🔔 The video for 'Rentrer à la maison' was created by video artist and film-maker Timo Schierhorn and was produced by Hamburg-based filmmaker collective Auge Altona. Unfortunately we do not have a name for the dog. [Edit: The dog's name is Fips, and his owner was Schierhorn's grandfather; it's a special posthumous appearance from them both.]
• 🔔 Anadol & Marie Klock's new album Manivelles is scheduled for release 15th May on Hamburg label Pingipung. You may pre-order it in vinyl and digital form from Bandcamp.

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📠
☟ Anadol Internet Presence ☟
soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ official site ⚘ instagram

☟ Marie Klock Internet Presence ☟
soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

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⌾

R23X – DRY SUMMER

Making your songs sound as polished and modern as possible is certainly a thing, but so is completely opening oneself up to the opposite – letting things unpredictable things happen to your productions. This is certainly the case with Canadian artist, R23X (stylised as あるR23エクス) – ostensibly named after the World War I era British airships of the same name – who distorts his songs using a VCR, amongst other things.

Instruments are recorded via audio interface onto VHS, the tape is taken out, bent, scratched, put back in, pause/unpaused for delay and warble; the piece is recomposed, with other instruments added, and the process repeated (this was all explained to me by the man himself).

So let's listen to 'Dry Summer' together.

The title is apt enough, with percussion sounding like a sheer swish of coarse sand fighting in a storm of static laden with warm chords; a super-high-pitched melody shines through this languid haze with backup from 80s-style power drums, all of it lurching towards a fade-out finale served up with crushed chiptune sounds. A wholly lo-fi outing, in the style of vaporwave, yet it utilises no samples and contains no ounce of funk – it illustrates the paradoxical positive lassitude in a heatwave-type scenario.

"My daily work as a composer and sound engineer requires me to focus on higher quality audio and often palatable music and sound," R23X explains further. "This project […] is lo-fi or procedural in nature because I find it so darn textured and interesting to listen to/create. Once you allow less predictable elements (like tape damage, fuzz, delay) to become a part of your compositions, they have the potential to become something unique and not something that I just "thought up" but rather something that I set parameters for and allow to happen." In this sense, the music of R23X is something that you could truly called experimental – in the very nature of the word.

He continues: "I am interested in prepared piano for this very same reason. I find art/music that deviates from formal processes so much more interesting. But with the VHS stuff specifically — nostalgia is definitely a part of it. There is something I find satisfying about the nostalgic tenor of the project, but also the anachronistic of using outmoded tech to record music and other things — like contemporary music. It's fun!"

• Check out R23X's art project (to which this musicmaking is "tangentially linked," he says) VHS Stills
• R23X is working on an EP! "I'm hoping to release it on a short run of VHS tapes with some abstract video art to accompany."

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Listen to R23X on SoundCloud

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