Colin Potter - Rank Sonata (2015)

“Rank Sonata“ is a brand new recording of the legendary Colin Potter, producer and collaborator of bands like Nurse With Wound, Organum and Current 93.

Colin Potter has been a central figure in the UK’s DIY and post-industrial underground since the late ‘70s. His ICR label, founded in 1981, blurred the lines between post-punk experimentation, crude pop, Krautrock-inspired drone work and contemporary electronica, with releases by everyone from DIY legends The Instant Automatons through Chris & Cosey of Throbbing Gristle, experimental composer Trevor Wishart, drone soundists Andrew Chalk and Darren Tate and Bryn Jones’s Muslimgauze. He has also been a key collaborator with both Current 93 and Nurse With Wound, working in the studio with both groups since the late ‘90s as well as serving as a member of Nurse With Wound’s current live line-up.
From the late ‘90s to the late ‘00s Potter’s IC Studio, based in a Victorian Water Tower outside Preston, was a lightning rod for musicians working beneath the radar and a focal point for the nascent UK drone scene. Recent years have seen an upsurge in interest in Potter’s solo works.
(By David Keenan)

Rank Sonata encloses sounds of organic techno up to somnambulistic dub and daydreamfull ambient. The nearly twenty minute long track “A Wider Pale Of Shale“ sounds absolutely timeless and could be played the whole night long because of its interplay of ambient and beat passages. With “And“ Potter shows us in a brilliant way how particular abstract sounds can be weaved into an unexpected multilayered dub track. “Knit Where?“ with its very deep and slow reverb rhythm gives the record even a touch of darkness and melancholy. “Rank Sonata“ is a brilliant piece of music full of technical sophistication und innovation.