DJ Solitare - Music Reviews
Ott: Blumenkraft
Twisted Records
twscd26I have always had a fascination for musical underdogs…those people who may not have international fame and name, but still have what it is that listeners are really looking for. Makyo, the brilliant musician who runs the Dakini label out of Tokyo, had long been shut out of parties even though he produced the most luscious ambient DJ mixes my ears had ever heard – and now he is well-recognized as a great composer in his own right. Artman, aka DJ Kudo, essentially founded the Tokyo electronic music scene, yet is still not known outside of some circles, even after his brilliant album Re-sort was released a good while back. We can now add the name Ott to the list of musical pioneers who deserves a degree of recognition proportional to his talent.
Ott was virtually unknown to the average psychedelic music listener until a couple of years ago, when his mix of Hallucinogen’s “Beautiful People” was released on Twisted’s Demented compilation - this despite his having been involved in the electronic music scene for many years. That music being essentially (on a harmonic level) Simon Posford’s, it is likely that Ott’s role in this track was underestimated. The release of Hallucinogen in Dub no doubt brought him more recognition – one of the most highly-praised albums last year revealed a major talent for the dub vibe - but it was still under the auspices of his friend and colleague’s name, and in that sense he was still in hiding.
Now Ott has an album bearing his own name on the Twisted label, and he may now very well get the recognition that his talent and work deserves. Blumenkraft, despite its Germanic name and rather comical yet clinical cover design, is an album of great variety. It has a luscious warmth even as the styles change from deep dub to a reggae feel, from a country music twang to lyrical Celtic and Indian grooves.
It starts off rather quietly – just some atmospheric noise before a baseline introduces itself and then fades out again. But as the first track – Jack’s Cheese and Bread Snack – progresses, your ears are greeted by an odd assortment of sonic collages: a sitar strum here soon followed by an electric guitar and bass; a line that transforms itself from a harmonic cascade of tones to Indian chanting into a “howzit goin’, mon” kind of groove.
What is stunning with the whole album is how organic it all is. Unlike most of the cookie-cutter music being produced these days, which is mechanically constructed rather than composed, Ott’s music bridges cultural and musical gaps like the movie masterpiece Baraka – they are all scenes from the same planet, and they can all interact peacefully.
It would be impossible to do justice to his music by describing it track by track in detail. Suffice it to say that each piece is a masterpiece, and some border on the kind of music that can make one obsessive. In the two months that I have been listening to my promo copy, I have been absolutely mesmerized by the closing track, Smoked Glass and Chrome. The singing (two choruses, one in ancient Celtic, the other Hindi) is of such exquisite beauty, the baseline so simple, the melody so hauntingly beautiful, and the textures so rich and varied that the track was going through my head for weeks. When I slipped the CD to the aforementioned Makyo to play at a party in Tokyo recently, it was no surprise that an awed silence fell over the room as bodies grooved to this track’s captivating charm.
This is an album that you won’t want to miss. The music is brilliant, the sounds themselves are delightful, and the engineering is stunningly clear. Let us hope that Ott decides to produce a trance album – that could be the shift in perspective that dance music is waiting for.
© by Mark Ainley 2003
