EXP

Album Review

A master at work — that's the best way to sum up the music on Exp. Here, electro-glitch master Frank Bretschneider clicks and cuts his way through 35 itsy-bitsy pieces (none over three minutes, many under one). Each one is a careful work of quasi-beat layering and hollow texture weaving. The music is highly abstract but lively, rhythm-based but hardly danceable in a normal fashion (or with the regular number of limbs). As an audio journey, Exp is a thrilling ride with hardly a bump into it and, even though it clocks in at only 35 minutes, it would be entirely satisfying as is. However, the project also includes a strong visual component in the form of an extra data CD featuring an 18-minute experimental animation film by Bretschneider. This film covers around 20 of the album's tracks, illustrating each click, each spurt of electronic sound with patterns of white dots over a black background — from lines and circles to more complex shapes. A new visual treatment, increasingly complex, was designed for each short piece. The approach is simple but the results speak volumes. After spending a while under the radar (his previous title for the revered experimental electronic music label Raster-Noton was released in 2007) — and at the same moment the clicks-and-cuts movement's flagship label Mille Plateaux has been resurrected — Frank Bretschneider sends us all a reminder as to why he should be considered one of that aesthetic's pioneers and major representatives. ~ François Couture, Rovi