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Rhythm & Sound
Rhythm & Sound

(Basic Channel, 2001)

If the passenger service of the Deutsche Reichsbahn had ever, well, gone dub.

Rhythm & Sound

I’ve been listening to this record on the way into work; Berlin techno duo Moritz Von Oswald and Mark Ernestus’ collection of the minimalist 12” dubscapes they recorded as Rhythm & Sound between 1997 and 2001. It should be ideal for the 23 minute train journey from Walthamstow Central to Oxford Circus as the CD’s collection of basal heart-beat rhythms and dusty, grey details always manages to lull me into a state of vivid REM sleep (sorry, REM sleep). However, the dreams I’ve been having are weird. Rhythm & Sound’s soundworld is subterranean, industrial and treacherous, evoking the echoing booms, clacks and heavy goods throb of European freight trains moving beneath concrete flyovers in the sodium-suffused urban night before the Wall fell.

In between the bleary glances at passing tube signs I keep dreaming of other, more sinister transports, carrying giant white canisters through be-fogged underground interzones. Of course, the locomotives I’ve been dreaming of are from Troy Kennedy Martin’s faultless 1985 TV nuclear apocalypse drama Edge Of Darkness. Because there was only ever one thing wrong with that series and that was this. But stick this on instead and you have a soundtrack that evokes the perfect Edge Of Darkness atmosphere of sequestered evil and creeping radioactive dread. Plus, as Von Oswald and Ernestus’ continue to hide from the prying media gaze, slipping into anonymity, you imagine they might identify with Bob Peck’s fate at the end of Edge…, disappearing back into nature, as a black flower on the Scottish hillside.

Andrew Male

Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 14/01/2009

Further Listening

Biosphere – Insomnia (Beatservice, 2007)

Basic Channel – BCD-2 (Southern, 2008)

Gas - Nah Und Fern (Kompakt, 2008)

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Rhythm & Sound

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  • What are you doing stoned at that time of the morning

    Posted by monstermark at 9:45 AM GMT 14/01/2009 Report Abuse

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  • Yup, the previous commentatorist has you down pat.
    Talking of Pat....if P.Gilbert'd posted those zoned-out observations his readers could've pictured a behatted Hammett manque drawling into a futuristic Dictaphone whilst inhaling a Passing Cloud........still, that never happened, so we all have to deal with bloody reality as it is (whoops, the meds are wearing off).

    .......and talking of reality: a rail journey through bleak industrial landscapes soundtracked by bleak industrial soundscapes- isn't AMale overegging the pudding somewhat?

    Posted by PhilHiggs at 12:18 AM GMT 15/01/2009 Report Abuse

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  • RE: PhilHiggs

    I like my reality pudding over-egged! Mmm... eggy pudding.

    I do like your imagining of Pat Gilbert as some down-at-heel continental operative. However, that kind of thing only encourages him (the rakishly cocked Oppenheimer pork-pie hat, the silk scarf, you get the picture)

    Posted by Andrew Male at 8:42 AM GMT 15/01/2009 Report Abuse

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