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Reuber: Kintopp
Staubgold
Not only does Timo Reuber's Kintopp bear one of the least appealing cover images I've seen in recent memory, if there's a connection between the photo and the cinematic theme of the album ('kintopp' is a colloquial German expression for 'cinema') it's an enigmatic one at best. Still, it's an incidental point so long as it doesn't deter potential listeners from checking out the Cologne-based musician's third album (he also partners with Markus Detmer in the group Klangwart). Conceptually, Kintopp purports to be a musical 'film' that provokes images in the listener's mind. If so, the movie in this case might be likened to a multi-hued, 40-minute National Geographic documentary of musical styles spanning the globe. Though it might have been a collage-like assortment of unrelated vignettes, Reuber fashions a seamless 'world music' travelogue with one piece often bleeding into another. African percussion patterns in “Tanz Mit Mir,” for example, carry on into “Bösewicht” but joined by seething guitar hardcore that escalates the song's intensity to a roaring caterwaul. The album's opening sections are generally louder and sometimes psychedelic in feel, with what follows slightly chilled and the music more electronic and pretty.
Tracing its trajectory, the collection opens with Latin-jazz rhythms coupled with a demented whistling noise and slightly cacophonous horn tones (“Stadflucht”), moves on to an episode of electronic waves and soft techno pulses and then animated patterns of clattering folk percussion that suggest an aboriginal dance; titles like “In Fernen Landern” (In Distant Countries) and “Der Geheime Garten” (The Secret Garden) appropriately match associations to musical content. Throat singing, Holy Minimalism strings, and sparkling harp strums and simple, pretty piano melodies also appear. While much of the album features acoustic sounds, there are electronic passages too; reverberant waves and ambient washes add colour to “Schöne Fremde” while propulsive Tangerine Dream synth patterns float through its background. Though the album occasionally rises to a feverish, hallucinatory pitch (“Wälzende Wirrnis”), it ends placidly with the sparkling piano coda “Schlusskuss.” Imagine Kintopp a wide-ranging musical travelogue with Reuber an explorative and enthusiastic guide.
June 2005
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