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Günter Müller, "Reframed"
Minimalism of this sort makes for a difficult proposition on the part of the composer. It takes an extremely talented artist to shape quiet sound into something that compels the listener to pay attention despite its inherent subtlety.Percussionist Günter Müller takes the raw sounds of bowed cymbals and processes the hell out of them into a shimmering composition of tones. Reframed consists of five pieces of varying lengths and dynamics that focus only on the pure tones achieved from digitally processing the sound of cymbals. "Reframed 1" gives a fitting introduction to the album as a whole: calm, mellow tones circling around with an ever so slight inkling of the cinematic sinister in the distance alongside a barely audible clicking rhythm buried deep in the mix. "Reframed 2" is the disc's centerpiece: a 22 minute work that begins very distant and subtle for around the first five minutes before a distant low end rumble begins to slide in, mimicking the sound of machinery idling somewhere in the distance. The track's length proves to be its Achilles' heel, because it doesn't quite give enough variation over its massive length. It was simply too easy to let it fade into the background while listening, which is a precarious pitfall for this sort of work.
"Reframed 3" leans into the ambient electronic spectrum, focusing on soft tones that have the analog warmth of an old Mellotron. (It would fit right in on Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2.) "Reframed 4" is by far the most minimal of the music presented here, opening nearly as inaudible as the work Bernhard Günter, but eventually builds in volume, punctuated with cymbals digitally morphed into chimes. The final track is my personal favorite, a rhythmic clicking panned around the mix like digital insects as ring modulated tones and what can only be described as a feedback from an analog buzzsaw cut through.
Reframed makes for an extremely compelling listen in the normally esoteric minimalist genre.The work draws on Müller's strength at manipulating sound while still maintaing a clear sense structure and direction, sounding composed as opposed to simply a collection of processed samples. While the long "Reframed 2" does drag the album down with its limited sonic palette, it is more than balanced by the remaining diverse pieces.
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