German musician Frank Gingeleit explores the virtues of home-based recording with surprisingly evocative results.
FRANK GINGELEIT: Nightmares & Escapades (CDR on Living Tunes)
This CDR from 2002 features 47 minutes of moody ambience.
Mechanical sounds mix with eerily resonant electronic textures, producing haunting harmonics that wash over the audience with their quirky disposition. Drifting moods emerge, infused with a soft unpredictability that nudges the flow into pleasant agitation.
Clanking percussives provide definition more so than any tempo, although some tracks do exhibit a rhythmic quality. When those rhythms appear, they rarely command or propel the tunes, instead blending their patter with the electronic morass.
An undercurrent of darkness lurks in these sonic constructions, evoking an uncertainty with their unwillingness to coalesce into any dynamic presence. It is a troubled ambience, generating a dreamlike quality that implies enigmatic wonder.
FRANK GINGELEIT: Megalopolis (CDR on Living Tunes)
This CDR from 2003 offers 49 minutes of electronic music.
This time, Gingeleit creates tuneage that flows with more purpose and melodic demeanor. His electronics acrete layers that produce surging harmonies filled with an understated dramatic tension.
While looped sequences define a cloudy atmosphere, auxilliary tones introduce a sense of expectancy that combines serenity with anticipation. A sense of faint urgency sweeps through the music, as riffs twirl and intermingle, merging into greater riffs of delicate structure. Finger-driven chords mix with growling ambience.
Although generaly beatless, this music does not lack in any driving quality. The melodies chug along under their own steam, generating rhythms from cyclic waves that are substantial enough yet rarely demonstrative.
With tracks that average between 6 and 8 minutes long, Gingeleit provides the listener with compact sonic excursions that do not overstay their welcome.
FRANK GINGELEIT: Toy Island (CDR on Living Tunes)
This CDR from 2003 features 50 minutes of lively electronic tuneage.
This time, Gingeleit mixes a strong percussive sense with a moving electronic structure, producing tunes that emerge to fill the air with a stately and energetic presence.
Lavish keyboards generate elegant riffs that spiral and swoop amidst auxilliary textures. Shrill tones embellish the flow, adding character and density. See-saw noises stimulate any flagging attention spans with their unpredictable disposition. Artificial sounds are imbued with a humanity that renders the songs a hybrid of man and machine.
The percussives are brisk and inviting, adding animation to the tunes with their winding-road tempos. Quasi-real drums blend with synthetic beats, creating rhythms that are clever and engaging.
One track ("Counting Sheep") utilizes a metronomic structure that excellently captures that realm at the edge of slumber where sleep will not come despite all attempts to calm the mind.
Overall, despite the maturity of the music on this release, it is evident that Gingeleit's target audience here are adolsecent ears.
FRANK GINGELEIT: Lost in the Deep Blue (CDR on Living Tunes)
This CDR from 2003 features 46 minutes of almost jazzy electronic music.
For this release, Gingeleit expands his sonic palette with guitar (albeit, guitar synthesizer). This expansion results in a distinctive change for his sound and style. Furthermore, the tracks were created live without overdub, resulting in a "band" quality that defies the fact that only one musician was involved in the music's creation.
Quirky electronics flow with exuberant purpose, unfurling and undulating to generate a shimmering atmosphere of crystalline sound. Cascading textures collide to form complex chords that become tension-laden riffs with the aid of eccentric percussives and resounding guitar effects. The rhythms are impulsive and swift. The guitars resound with strumming and pounding, filling the music with staccato punctuations that clash with each other as they form excited riffs.
A frenetic quality emerges in this music, a mood of constant urgency that strains to explode beyond its own perimeters. The pace becomes often exhaustive, as if Gingeleit is rushing to achieve a pinnacle before its time.
There is an improsed edge to this music, unplanned yet remarkably cohesive in its final state.
FRANK GINGELEIT:Selections (CDR on Living Tunes)
This CDR from 2003 features 56 minutes of music from Gingeleit's "Nightmare and Escapades", "Megalopolis", and "Toy Island" releases.
This release provides an excellent means to explore Gingeleit's music in an overview, providing samples from his abstract, symphonic and beat-driven styles.
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