by François Couture
Whatness is a joint venture between an audio art gallery and a record label. Aerial Riverseries is the title of a series of photographs by Olafur Eliasson, depicting river banks seen from an aerial view. The rivers run through what looks like a taiga: rocks, light vegetation, snow. The color spectrum runs from light brown to light green, going through a number of yellows. Frank Bretschneider (aka Komet) has produced a series of 42 one-minute tracks that also explore monochromes. Sequences are organized into longer pieces: tracks one through six, eight through 13, 15 through 18, 20 through 24, 25 through 30, 31 and 32, 33 through 38, and 39 through 42. Tracks seven, 14, and 19 are the only pieces truly lasting only 60 seconds, but in the other sequences Bretschneider managed to introduce a significant change every minute, thus justifying a new index each time. It feels like watching a clockwork slide show. The music moves through many levels of intensity, from delicate ambient to the form of techno-dub Komet is best known for. Words related to the paradigms of water and air were already often used to describe his music, so in a sense this collaboration was bound to yield interesting results. If the album is conceptually sound, the tunes themselves rank among Bretschneider's best work, trippy laid-back ambient techno, German style. Recommended.