Black To Comm

The Dekorder label's boss Marc Richter is at the creative heart of Black To Comm, and he's certainly putting himself about a bit these days: there are new albums in the works for Digitalis, and in collaboration with Boomkat barnacle, John Xela, but before all that, we've got Fractal Hair Geometry to contend with, and it's a mightily entertaining three-quarter hours of adventurous and unusual drone studies. Richter combines wordless vocals and miscellaneous electronics with Casio and Farfisa organs, occasionally calling upon the assistance of additional musicians including Kuupuu's Joanna Karanka, who add what on paper reads like a terribly conventional list of instruments, including piano, violin and trumpet. It's difficult to workout exactly what Richter's done to get from that starting point to a finished product that sounds so head-spinningly weird: 'Orange Record' is a speeded up tape frenzy, tweeting through a tuneful, if slightly nauseating eight minutes. Elsewhere, 'Negative Volumes' at times sounds like a choir of cats, while a choppy sense of urgency arises from the fast-strobing waveforms of 'Leigh Bowery', which features a rare instance of explicit percussion, punching out a booming 4/4 kick while the Growing-style drone work swells and modulates.