'MORNING TONES' REVIEW Boomkat - 2007 We do love New York’s Apestaartje label, falling somewhere inbetween the digital sincerity of 12K and the organic loveliness of Kranky, they managed to wow ears in the last couple of years with the gorgeous Mountains project and now they’re back with an album from M. Rösner. Rösner’s second disc after the wonderful ‘Alluvial’ for Aussie label Room40, this takes his sound further into the extremes of shimmering acoustic beauty and stomach wobbling tones. Those of you who are familiar with Oren Ambarchi’s seminal ‘Grapes from the Estate’ album will no doubt know what I’m talking about here, and Rösner has a similar gift in that he can blend pure digital tone structures with simple plucked acoustic guitar, field recordings and washed out percussion. ‘Morning Tones’ is a meeting of the digital and the acoustic, and the exchange is tense, gripping and somewhat awkward. The two different worlds are initially at odds and the sound at first can jar, but a few minutes in and you’ll wonder why they were ever split – they just make perfect sense together. I suppose this interplay will become more and more common now that musicians are finally getting to grips with using computers and digital processing in a much more musical manner. The computer has now become a musical instrument and Rösner has clearly developed great skill in playing it. Across the album he shows how he can trawl through Eno-esque calm with ‘Comber’, almost Kraut-rock style sensationalism on ‘Morning Tones’ and menacing drone with ‘Dissolve’, giving the album a defiant breadth of style to play with. In fact I could compare ‘Morning Tones’ with Keith Fullerton Whitman’s crucial ‘Multiples’ in the way that it skates from composition to composition each time mastering a different part of electro-acoustic music. The album is a simply marvellous collection of shattered musical visions, and another fabulous addition to the Apestaartje catalogue. Highly recommended.
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