Description
Label Review.
2019 album.
Our Overview.
‘Before After’ is the magical and engrossing new album from German composer and experimental artists Marc Richter, under the guise of Black To Comm. Marc pushes the boundaries of audio design, his work combining acoustic instrumentation, samples and electronic manipulation, with sound sources ranging from crackly old records to droning organs. On occasion, he'll incorporate breakbeats or detached techno rhythms into his audio constructions.
‘Before After’ described by The Quietus as “An impressive balancing act evident of an artist in complete command of his medium” on this new release Black To Comm masterfully manipulates sound, his alterations rendering sources unidentifiable and serving as a sort of portal to new realities. Composer Marc Richter collapses the past, present and future of recorded music into kaleidoscopic pieces that transcend genre, bristling with detail, an intense sensory sonic experience.
The spectacularly other worldly ‘Before After’ charts a hallucinogenic journey through polar extremes of emotion and to the outer reaches of sound; a perfect companion to the darker ‘Seven Horses For Seven Kings’. The album was written during the same sessions that gave birth to Richter’s recent, highly acclaimed ‘Seven Horses For Seven Kings’. The intentionally crafted companion pieces mine similar raw sonic materials to yield radically different results. However, where ‘Seven Horses For Seven Kings’ was a dark work focused on anger and desperation, ‘Before After’ finds faint glimmers of hope in the same sources. By reappraising the past, Richter divines new futures, opening up parallel timelines and sonic universes.The album bookends the current phase of Richter’s output as Black To Comm, a decisive statement piece that leaves the future of the project tantalisingly open ended.LP pressed on virgin vinyl and packaged with free digital download card.