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REITEN 0​.​009

by Kosei Fukuda

/
1.
Owls 09:13
2.
3.
If 05:59
4.

about

As the saying goes, ‘the owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.’ That is to say, understanding of reality comes late, often too late. We need time to get things fully. It’s similar with complex, rough records that transcend or challenge the genre boundaries that they are supposed to represent. We need time so that they can grow on us. And perhaps it’s not coincidental that techno – and electronic music more generally – thrives as soundtrack to nightlife, typically unfolding after dark, often literally underground.

“Owls” EP is a perfect example of such a record: nocturnal, dense, multifaceted, sometimes harsh, always intriguing work that is hard to categorize and yet perfectly suited to various club uses. What’s special about it though is that it is visceral and cerebral at the same time; it is a concept and a feeling presented in four installments. The record starts with the title track which is a tour de force in the vein of driving big room techno. It’s a great sounding DJ tool. Its dancefloor functionality matches the intensity of repetitive form. But this is also where the stylistic purity – if there is any – ends.

The rest of the vinyl explores more diffuse but no less haunting architectures of bass music. ‘Inside your skin’ veers in a dub step direction and marks the territory that the rest of the EP will scrutinize more insistently. It is a heavy mid-tempo break beat track replete with distorted and jarring sounds and ominous scream-like background synths. The B side opens up with an even more sinister atmosphere. But ‘If’ serves as an intermezzo rather than another declaration; it is a musical question: ‘what if’? What if things get even darker? In this capacity, it’s a very effective mood setter, whereby the beat gets largely dissolved in a dark foggy ambience for the purpose of clearing the stage for the final installment of this nocturnal story – ‘Purity of Evilness.’

Here the fit between the title and the emotional content is perhaps most literal and direct. The track commences with a droning menacing sound that’s going to stay throughout unchanged, like a throbbing, hovering, electronic perpetuum mobile. And then when a tribal kind of beat kicks in, it’s clear that we’re confronted with a massive slow-burner that doesn’t need much more to prove its aura of a pure horror. Neither typical techno, nor an experimental drone music, it’s instead a stripped down industrial exercise in soundtracking our darkest premonitions and giving them voyeristic, almost mesmerizing sonic form.

Dominik Bartmanski
Berlin, June 2020

credits

released December 1, 2019

Produced by Kosei Fukuda
Mixed by Tobias Freund
At Non Standard Studios, Berlin
Mastered by Tim Rees
at WhiteLinnStudio, Berlin
Artwork by Satoshi Nemoto
Design by REITEN

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Kosei Fukuda Berlin, Germany

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