Review: FM Einheit ‘Exhibition Of A Dream’
FM Einheit has effectively rendered reviews of this new album semi-useless by blessing it with a title that is about as approximate a description of the contents as you could possibly need. As the press blurb puts it, this long player was initially created in 2017 and ‘recorded both in public and in private in the amphitheatres and the garden of the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, and in Einheit’s own studio Steinschlag.’
Essentially Einheit gathers a fascinating and broad selection of guests from various artistic fields, providing a musical interpretation of their dreams, with the likes of film maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, artist Émilie Pitoiset and guitar legend and poet Lee Ranaldo amongst others, submitting their reveries for the former Einstürzende Neubauten composer to work with.
It’s a lengthy undertaking as you might imagine, tipping in at just over ninety minutes in duration, but every second of the album is carefully considered and thoroughly engaging. The musical twists and turns compliment the surreality of the dream state, throwing up all kinds of moods and colours and allowing them to morph organically in the way a dream might. Einheit‘s compositions portray the various sources with a lightness of touch and sense of playfulness throughout, never allowing things to get too dark or dense, but avoiding whimsy.
Be it through the shuffling rhythms that hover over the start of Un Sognio Tessuto In Tapeto or the rustling textures that underlay Ranaldo‘s narration on Alpine Traum, there’s a gentle forward momentum at the work of everything, appropriate given this is the work of someone with a percussive background. Einheit‘s experience of taking traditionally non-melodic sounds and making them inherently musical is all over the pieces, and everything here feels ethereal.
sounds that seem at odds with each other on paper but form a wondrous, intricate musical structure that’s easy to get lost in…
Strange whirring noises and what sounds like a mouth harp layer over a bass pulse and breath like sounds on Le Baiser De Supion, sounds that seem at odds with each other on paper but form a wondrous, intricate musical structure that’s easy to get lost in. In fact a lot of the music here feels like being immersed in clouds of sound – intangible yet present, enveloping you without encroaching on your physical space.
There’s hints of jazz (Susie Green‘s delightfully filthy Joyful Pleasure in particular), drone, electronica and glassy art rock throughout, but ultimately the music is particular to the composer, and doesn’t sound quite like anything else, or fit into any particular genre. To interpret other people’s words in such an identifiably personal way so as that the music couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else is the hallmark of true craftsmanship. Even when Genesis P. Orridge, a figure whose personality would overshadow most other contributors, shows up to ramble on in their usual pseudo mystical fashion on the closing fifteen minutes of Creation ReCreated it feels like a true collaboration, rather than Einheit just providing accompaniment.
A collection of musical adventures that celebrates the subconscious, and the paths it can lead us down, the man they called Mufti provides a beautiful and mischievous soundtrack to the wild and free world of dreams, and like all good dreams it seems like time is irrelevant once you get into the depths of it. A fine album to stick on and lose yourself in.
Label: Cold Spring Records
Band Links: Official | Facebook
Scribed by: Jamie Grimes
