Audiopile Review: In the early 2000s, there were three distinct wings of the emerging glitch scene. Perhaps the most well-known was the cerebral sound pioneered by the Mille Plateaux label, whose founder Achim Szepanski tragically passed away a couple of weeks ago. Then you had the punk pranksterism of Mego, founded by the late Peter ‘Pita’ Rehberg. And finally, there was the elegant minimalism of Raster-Noton, founded by Frank Bretschneider and Carsten ‘Alva Noto’ Nicolai. Bretschneider and Nicolai are thankfully still with us and perhaps more visible than ever. New and reissued Alva Noto albums are regular features here, and they are literally all awesome. You may remember Bretschneider from the recent reissue of his 2001 classic ‘Curve’. ‘Pounding’ is Bretschneider’s first solo album since 2020’s ‘abtasten_halten’, which came via Jan Jelinek’s Faitiche label. It continues the trend among more recent Raster-related releases, which tend to be more ruggedly rhythmic than the label’s delicate classic sound. Fans of Diamond Version, Byetone’s killer ‘Symeta’, and Nicolai’s ‘Uni’ series are going to love this one. Despite the name, though, ‘Pounding’ has a lot more to offer than mere jackhammer beats. That signature elegance, which made ‘Curve’ so timelessly beautiful, is clearly audible throughout. An essential new release for fans of all things glitchy and electronic.

Unequal cycles in search of synchronous experiences: On his new album Pounding, Frank Bretschneider tells of distance, convergence and congruence in a continuous, ever-changing flow of events. What is often regarded as an unquestionable dogma in club music — the groove — appears precarious, unstable, and in motion. Pulse and accent are volatile encounters and have to be found again and again for short, delightful moments. Music becomes a constant process of negotiation. In search of new sound spaces, Bretschneider has recently worked a lot with modular synthesizers, both solo, and in collaborations, including the project Beispiel together with Jan Jelinek. Pounding was created using similar means — conceived in 2020 for the Pochen Biennale in Chemnitz, subsequently developed further and recorded in March and April 2023 on a sample-based modular system. And in fact, Bretschneider is once again exemplarily scanning his own sound material, such as dub effects that listen to them-selves disintegrate; but also the human voice, or more precisely: the stuttering of fragments of speech, far in the distance but omnipresent, like a mysterious narration. Aesthetically, the eleven pieces form part of a series of works with a focus on percussion. Bretschneider has already perfected this approach with albums like Rhythm (2007) and has been shifting the perspective ever since, for ever-new results. Shifting is the basic principle of Pounding. Bretschneider combines elements that are in different aggregate states, changing their relationship to each other and thus ensuring the complex overall movement. He lets one to two-bar loops run against each other and through small manipulations, develops a network of rhythms that creates a hypnotic state in the counterplay of repetition and mutation, between clearly recognizable meter and disorientation. There are comparable approaches in aleatoric music. Bretschneider combines them with sounds and patterns that are reminiscent of step sequencer logic and at the same time go far beyond it. The result is relational techno. Never obvious, always restless and exciting.