Kreidler
Flood
Label: Bureau B
Genre: Electronica / Ambient / Experimental
Availability
- LP €24.99 Dispatched within 5-10 working days
FLOOD is the frame, though it is a permeable one. ANDERS CLAUSEN and HENRIK OLESEN have placed a feather on the cover and written A SHIP OF NO PORT on the inner sleeve. Movement frozen in luminescent yellow. Green-grey liquefaction. Nature and construct, fluttering. A ship of no ports, not wanting to dock anywhere. Or everywhere: a ship of many ports - openings, open access, outstretched arms. Welcome! This dance is yours!
THOMAS KLEIN, ALEXANDER PAULICK, ANDREAS REIHSE and DETLEF WEINRICH assembled in Düsseldorf in winter of 2018 for recordings, and then continued with further sessions in Berlin. Starting with around a dozen sketches, the band produced eight pieces, including FLOOD I - IV and FLOOD V, an ensemble of five songs that - in LP terms - fills the entire second side of the album.
But let's start from the beginning. Side One - still speaking in LP terms - begins pleasantly enough with the gentle roll and slight murmur of EURYDIKE. Borrowed from Greek mythology, the title refers to the pretense of affection as a means of abandonment. Painting scars onto the skin, using self-deception and lies, walking over corpses to flatter stones. We don't need to mention HIS name here, and anyway, the gender is variable. The song is called EURYDIKE: the wistful saxophone, the bass notes, the slight trembling in the sound all speak of her awakening from dis-illusion -from grief that the backward look is no assurance of striding forward together, but only a vis-a-vìs intent to put the other out of the picture then fill it with his own poisonous glory. The song depaints how EURYDIKE transforms her enforced departure into victory, with the quiet certainty that she will never be forgotten.
"Hvis man mildner hjertet i rette tid/ Og ikke vil dæmme op for den rasende strøm med vold"
(A&W, Prometheus.nu, Okeanos Scene, Betty Nansen Teatret, Copenhagen)
CELERATION, the second piece, seems to accelerate. But if we listen closely, the pace of EURYDIKE is actually maintained. The tone becomes sharper, the rhythm creaky, the rolling more energetic, the sequence calls for a sacrifice. Wind breaks off, snare strikes, a melody rises out of a dark rumbling, ghosts circle over the city, a heavy yellow freight train rumbles past
"You can't stop running water"
(The Neville Brothers, Sons & Daughters)
A shimmy, a scuttle, a quarter step: NESINDANO. The voice we hear is KHOES, alias Nesindano Namises; the language we hear is Khoekhoe / Damara. A gong, a CR-78 joins, a clicking, a flicker, words flutter, a bass booms, the voice rises up to the hookline, an FM synthesizer picks up the pieces and carries them along, percussion rattles. Agit-Pop! a pronunciamento to dance with the powers, a dance against power: "sida huada, ti a, sa " = all of it is ours, mine and yours! A shimmy, a scuttle, a quarter step, a bow. FLOOD.
Shall we speak of floods where the river overflows in abundance, while one person's shortage becomes another's surplus. FLOOD I - IV is not about modesty or humility. It calls for always demanding the maximum - of oneself and for oneself - which also means to give, and that each may set their own limits while respecting others, accepting them and helping where help is needed.
RICARDO DOMENECK takes on FLOOD II while looking out over the sea in Brazil, his feet in the sand for a few minutes, recalling a conversation with a geologist: how every single grain spans a space of millions of years. Crushed from stone, purged of rock, washed down by mountains, times and tides. The language we hear is Portuguese. FLOOD I - IV Synthesizers, strings, rusty percussion, guitars enter into dialogue, a collaborative negotiation, a swelling and descending, a showering in transparent layers, banging on shore, heads are rolling, liquefying hierarchies not structures. FLOOD IV is a dance that flows into FLOOD V, taking with it its instrumentation and mood, and moving it into a state between an easy-elegiac thoughtfulness and a concentrated contemplation. In appearance, FLOOD V bends back toward EURYDIKE, but this circle is not closed, it expands, opening wide in all directions, and offers opportunities to dock, to keep going.
KREIDLER, this four-headed hydra of a continental pop music that captures Bach, Disco, Postpunk, Club and Krautrock in varying proportions with an elegant lightness. On FLOOD the band playfully expands its approach with two renowned voices. We hear language, information. And even though we may not understand them at first, we sense that these are words of weight. An emphasis on what KREIDLER has always been about: the movement of the body - hand in hand with that of the mind.
(V. Luxemburgo)