CRISTIAN VOGEL
Double Deux / Delicado: Music For The Creations Of Gilles Jobion
S55003
Station 55 Records
08 Tracks. 58mins56secs / 01 Track. 33mins14secs

With this two disc set, Cristian Vogel takes his countenance for the rave dancefloor and siphons it off to that of interpretative dance. Surprising or not, this spells a sort of pyrrhic victory for Vogel, who seemed quite at home in crafting esoteric techno concoctions. Evidently, both works on display here were created in parallel with the choreography, and thus form a certain symbiosis between himself, the choreographer and, of course, the dancers themselves.

As a single thirty-minute composition, the fruits of Delicado take the form of crisp digital beats that sound like sandpaper anxiously rubbing itself to sleep. Around this foundation, pieces of static hum and other such clicks and scratches frenetically pucker, pop and fizz, working to further establish a fine sensation of pulse and energy. This opens up a fairly luminous setting, which unfolds across a series of open-ended textures, which are threaded with rolling half-melodies that often sound like tiny metal butterflies. Once erected, however, impressive as the process may have been, it nevertheless becomes apparent that, as a piece of aural architecture, it is one which cannot be wholly appreciated for what it simply is materially, but in what it actually does, that is to say, in what function it serves – namely, as an environment for and against which the dancers are meant to interact.

With Double Deux, on the other hand, Vogel manages to convey an excited monologue about concentric circles and caustic hisses spinning more and more out of control. Though similar in approach, the shorter tracks work better for him. With shorter stretches of time, his music actually does more, as he takes a slightly abrasive mechanical rhythm, pairs it with haunting synthesized and slowly moving sounds, and allows it to spin more or less maniacally around its tonic, continually injecting or stripping away elements which the piece struggles with in fascinating ways to deal with and incorporate. Also having been broken into subsections, these pieces reveal more distinctive weights and colors and, on a whole, stand up better on their own.

3.5/5

Cristian Vogel
Buy: CD