Jung An Tagen: He’s the Full-On Man

Title: Das Fest Der Reichen

Label: Editions Mego

Hmmm. Ok. Right. Well…look, before i say anything about this one, I’m going to do some that I tend to avoid, I’m going to quote from a press release. You’ll see what I mean. It attempts to describe the music. Here we go. Brace yourself, “By using subtractive synthesis and sampling techniques, Jung An Tangen build aleatoric arrays, repetitive figures and polyrhythmic moires circulating around distinctive timbres and haptic fragments, resulting in a vision of morphing movements between high energy and zero gravity states.”

OK, I’ll wait for you to rest and grab a coffee and see you back here in a few minutes.

Back again? Right. Well, that first paragraph of the press release? How it reads? That’s what the first few minutes of this LP sounds like. It’s full on, it’s experimental. It’s rhythmic but also avant-garde. It’s hypnotic and mesmerising but always fascinating.

If I was to compare to to anything? There’s a bit of Philip Glass in there. There’s some Steve Reich. But there’s also any number of contemporary electronica artists in there adding more punch and impact to the rhythms and synth module selection. It’s a bit pat and redundant to say (especially as he is the primary music act working inside the Virtual Institute Vienna) but there is a krautock element to his presentation that is distinctly Tangerine Dream-like in its approach. But early years stuff, not the safer later works. This is the scary and innovative side of TG-style electronic music. There is a bounce, an energy, an unstoppable life and vivacity within the music that is never monotonous, always full of ideas and sub-ideas of that idea and so on, that sends your senses into a whirl. Mastering is nice, there is a slight compression here, a slight digital spotlight but nothing that is at all obtrusive or nasty. Just a slight ‘sheen’, if you will, that contrasts nicely with the vintage synth presentational feel.

I would give it a big thumbs up but I fear that it might splinter into haptic fragments.