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4/14/2019

DR – Herr und Knecht (2018)




  • Dark ambient 
  • Illbient 
  • Microtonal
  • Drone 
  • Post-industrial 
  • Minimalism 
  • Avant-garde 
  • Ambient drone 
  • Experimentalism 
  • Abstract

Comment: this album consists of one long-running composition called Wassilij Andrejewitsch Brechunov & Nikita. Dominic Razlaff aka DR's 15-minute track is inspired by the same-titled novel by Lev Tolstoy and the cover print depicts the great Russian writer being illustrated by another outstanding Russian cultural icon Ilya Repin. This is an overcoming composition by providing different functional aspects and different explanations and interpretations. While having listened to it I was reading Stanislav Lem's Solaris and it resonated with the situation while the protagonist Kelvin was falling down towards the surface of the planet Solaris. All you can hear over there it is sonically very monotonous moving emitting eerie and ghastly sentiments as if foretelling something negative is going to happen soon. It can be interpreted as if moving either through a black hole or one is starving in Outer Space because the human being is not expected to come and start dwelling on another populated planet. As one song by the Estonian punk juggernauts J.M.K.E poignantly stated /there are around a plenty of good planets but we are not welcomed to come over there/. One simple punk song can say much more than a sophisticated yet magniloquent philosophical text or discourse or a misleading vision. And it is not going to happen anyway because the human kind is currently in a profound crisis, the conflict between the left-wing and right-wing politicians and intellectuals has obviously never been so intense and hostile as now. One greedy devil is demonised by another and vice versa. In the current situation it is very purgative and transcendental to experience such a black-hued masterpiece as Herr und knecht by the very prolific German ambient producer DR. The strongest point of this release is to transform all those abstract post-industrial inclined drones into sensations where one can perceive warmth, majesty, horror, repulsion and more or less positive or adverse feelings. In this context less is very much. The issue is a part of the discography of Murmure Intemporel.