Album: K5
Author: Frans de Waard
Publication: Vital Weekly (source)
Date: 04/09/2013

The 33 CDRs Frank Rothkamm produced where nailed against a wall as part of an exhibition and later sold as an art item. Its a pity that my particular copy was nailed through the actual CDR so it doesn't play. But Rothkamm send me a download link so I can hear it anyway, while I now have an art object disguised as a CDR. There seems to be less of a conceptual edge to this work than on some of Rothkamm other works, and the nine pieces here last 33 minutes and 33 seconds. The whole art thing was part of a lecture and audio-visual performance
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Rothkamm is a collector of vintage synthesizers, which he puts to good use here. Some of these pieces are quite short, and hardly with any sound. The longer pieces are studies for the K5 synthesizer (well, all are, but here at least we hear something) made by Kawai in 1987
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The music is not too dissimilar to what I sometimes refer to as 'Planet Of The Apes' film score. That soundtrack has become the template of almost anything that sounds like analogue synthesizers without the cosmic use of arpeggio's - space is not place here, but with all that microsound gliding and sustaining, bouncing in and out of the mix. Its actually nice music
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Perhaps it doesn't stand out with some others in the same field, and perhaps the conceptual Rothkamm edge is not apparent, but purely as a musical release it is very nice
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(FdW)

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