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tehoteardo blixabargeld nerissimo
Artist: Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld
Title: Nerissimo
Genre: Experimental
Release Date: 22nd April 2016
Label: Specula Records


Album Review

Blixa Bargeld, founding member of hugely influential experimentalists EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN and sometime BAD SEED, is reunited with equally influential Italian musician, composer and sound designer Teho Teardo for 2016’s Nerissimo (meaning The Blackest) release. An album that enchants from the very off, it’s multilingual – opening in English, ending in Italian, with German in between, perfectly linking Berlin and Rome, the two countries where these curious soundscapes were recorded – and swollen with textures and unexpected pleasures. Bargeld’s darkly sinister voice creeps and crawls all over DHX2 like a big black spider, and the sway and swing of ‘Ich Bin Dabei’ lulls and soothes before throwing in unexpected sounds and directions to keep you from falling into whatever dream it originally came from.

And there’s a dream-like quality to much of what is on offer here. The sparse, skeletal ‘The Empty Boat’ has NICK CAVE written all over its brittle bones, whereas ‘Ulgae’ has bizarre nightmarish voices over soaring and then falling violins before Bargeld spins his odd narrative and the whole experimental creation builds to a happy end, where it’s impossible not to smile at the totally odd, blackly humorous idea. It’s clever yet simple, and easily avoids pretentiousness by simply being self-assured. It is what it is – the product of two veterans, who have invented, shaped and influenced countless scenes and genres over the decades who now maturely glide between them like two dark swans.

‘Nirgendheim’ is astonishingly beautiful with its carefully unfolding drama, and the narrative to Give Me over humming backing vocals is seductively powerful and completely insane. Which leaves just the Italian version of the title track, somehow sounding totally different by simply switching languages. A wonderfully clever device, and the perfect way to close the perfect circle that is Nerissimo. Stark, bleak, warm, lovely, this album contains all the contradictions and juxtapositions you would expect from these two respected artists, and as a whole it achieves something quite extraordinary, existing in its own world and time-frame happily oblivious to anything and anyone outside it. Go and lose yourself there, it’s a fabulous experience.


Tracklist

01. Nerissimo
02. DHX2
03. Ich Bin Dabei
04. The Empty Boat
05. The Beast
06. Animelle
07. Ulgae
08. Nirgendheim
09. Give Me
10. Nerissimo (Italian)


Line-up

Teho Teardo
Blixa Bargeld


Website

http://www.tehoteardo.com


Cover Picture

tehoteardo blixabargeld nerissimo


Rating

Music: 9
Sound: 9
Total: 9 / 10





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