Andreas Gerth & Carl Oesterhelt - The Aporias Of Futurism (2021)

Thick, billowing electronic drones, foley rattles and screwed early Hollywood classical music? This one's a dense proposition - influences range from Milton's 'Paradise Lost' to ancient Rome - but properly reveals itself slowly over repeat listens. For fans of Wolfgang Voigt, Norwegian early electronic don Arne Nordheim, Deathprod or even AFX >> this is really fucking good.

Andreas Gerth and Carl Oesterhelt have worked together for years, both members of the now defunct collective Tied +Tickled Trio, but 'The Aporias Of Futurism' reaches a new level in their careers. The album sprung to life after Oesterhelt began experimenting with a broken CD player and processing it through a ring modulator, with Gerth contributing by adding the sampled sounds of everyday objects. To reference a more distant past, he processed early 20th century classical music and it's the use of creaking orchestral elements - employed not to position the music as "neo classical" or to hint at a culturally accepted form of aesthetic prettiness, but to drag history into the present day and recontextualize it.

The effect is disconcerting, unsettling music that allows both musicians to play to their strengths and use their production and performance experience to mastermind a concoction of synthesis and sampling that sounds as exploratory as the GRM catalogue and as psychedelic and propulsive as Donato Dozzy and Daniele di Gregorio's "Buchla & Marimba". In its most electronic stretches, there are percussive rhythmic bursts that gesture towards Autechre's wired DSP trickery, but set against foreboding, Bernard Herrmann-esque strings while synth tones ring and rattle, metal sheets scrape and clang, and pitched-down orchestral elements recall Wolfgang Voigt's early GAS productions.

It's long as hell, and takes a couple of listens to fully unpack, but it's worth the effort - trust us.