* Edition of 100 * “The first two weeks of lockdown I was sitting in my kitchen paralyzed just like everyone else, following the news anxiously. When boredom and anxiety set in and to keep myself sane I started to record audio off my Twitter feed; people playing their instruments at home (in *their* kitchens), anti-vaxxer car demos, people shouting & swearing at each other in streets & supermarkets. I made little sketches, loops and songs from these samples combined with some of my own home and field recordings. “A C of M” compiles a selection of these tracks, including reworks of older recordings, unauthorized remixes, abandoned drafts. I’m not sure if it’s an album or a mixtape or something else and it does not matter much. Twitter (as terrible as it can be) became my main link to the outside world in this weird period so it felt consequential to incorporate it into my work practise for the time being.”
The music on this cassette album is schizophrenic at best and weirdly mirrors the situation it was created in. From pure melancholy to the unbearingly happy, absurd, flowery; then deeply depressed and achingly beautiful; from potential failures to small triumphs and everything inbetween. Tracks were cranked out quickly and without the excessive refinement Richter’s albums are known for - sometimes it works in favour of the music and creates a newfound playfulness and weightlessness, sometimes you may wish a skeletal song would become a full throttle Black To Comm epic in the future.
Black To Comm is the moniker for Hamburg based artist Marc Richter. His albums have been released by Thrill Jockey (including the widely hailed Seven Horses For Seven Kings in 2019), his own Dekorder label and Type Recordings (Alphabet 1968). His next full-length album titled Oocyte Oil & Stolen Androgens is coming out on Thrill Jockey on Oct. 30, 2020. Richter composes soundtracks for film, has worked with visual artists such as Mike Kelley and Ho Tzu Nyen and creates acousmatic multichannel installations for institutions such as INA GRM in Paris and ZKM in Karlsruhe. He also records as Jemh Circs and Mouchoir Étanche for his new Cellule 75 label (named in tribute to the late Luc Ferrari).
