Vinyl 12″ – 4Bit

Tracks one to six in NOK were originally released by Mego in 2000 as a 3” mini-cd. Here they have been remastered from the original DAT tapes and cut to vinyl by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering in Berlin. The release, for the first time on vinyl, also includes two new remixes, one by Christian Fennesz and another by Stefan Németh, as well as linocuts by Ulrich Troyer himself, the sound artist who, twenty years ago, obtained an honorary mention at the Prix Ars Electronica of Linz in the Digital Music category. The compositions were presented by Mego as “a soundtrack of a fictional comic”, in which the palette of very high and very low frequencies are made one with the organic sounds in a polyrhythmic flow. It is a pleasure to see that the work still feels contemporary and rigorous today, notably for the quality of the textures and perfect control of all the various audio components. Christian Fennesz in his usual stylistic elegance offers a powerful and new remix focused on guitar chords, an interpretation that is at one and the same time joyful and sad, melodic with some disturbances fading into the background, with the evident intention of making harmonies and dissonances coexist in the same score. Stefan Németh (founding member of the band Radian) instead creates a sort of ideal condensation of the sound world of NOK, with additional overdubs using the same Korg MS-20 he used 20 years ago, a monophonic analogue synthesizer typical to the seventies. That’s not all, because Troyer includes two new NOKs, tracks number seven and eight: the first is more in keeping with the original work, but more celestial and with a strong rhythmical impact, the latter deeper, more slippery, nocturnal and disturbing. Last but not least, a remix of “Nok 1”, named Skeleton Mix, provides a thorough recap of the entire experiment in an even more pressing and engaging key. This 2020 release is from 4Bit Productions, a label that also distributes London-based Kudos.

 

Ulrich Troyer – NOK 2020