Plastikman
Musik

Good evening, I am here seated in front of my computer to vividly talk to you about a twisted album, naturally forged from the complicated mind of a great artist: Plastikman. Well, to clear things up for some of you who will read this review (and I hope I will have to clarify things for few), Plastikman is just one of the many pseudonyms attributed to the composer. The artist is Mr. Richie Micheal Hawtin.

He was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire in England on the distant June 4, 1970. Later, he moved to Canada, specifically to a suburb in Windsor, Ontario.

From a young age, he showed great interest in electronic music and soon became a Disk Jockey, the young man did not yet know that his mind and his type of innovative art would lead him to occupy a top spot in the realm of electronic music.

Inspired from the beginning by Jeff Mills, Hawtin is the leading exponent (and one of the creators) of the electronic music trend known as Minimal. This particular type of music aims to take the listener on a mental journey, the most evident feature is the tiresome (almost stressful) repetitiveness of the music itself supported by underlying basses; within a minimal composition, we can find any kind of noise (animal sounds, typical noises of our daily life, words or phrases for example) carried forward with multiple variations throughout the piece.

But now let's focus on the reason I'm here: the album "Musik". This record is the third album overall for the Canadian composer and the second with the moniker Plastikman, it was conceived in 1994.

The record is divided into ten tracks, it opens with "Konception", a song that homogeneously mixes the typical repetitiveness (with the absence of melody) of pure minimal with ethnic musical rhythms creating a surreal and abstract atmosphere but at the same time concrete and dense. It is followed by "Plastique", this second track starts with rhythms related to minimal electronica then develops, in full Hawtin style, into tight and constant rhythms drenched in psychedelic atmospheres (especially at the end), with its 13 minutes and 3 seconds it is the longest song on the record. "Kriket" is the next track; impressive from the beginning, this minimal session fully expresses the concept previously discussed, the record seems to awaken from the "dreaming sleep" it has carried forward until then, the last part of the track is an intro composed of atmospheres leading to the fourth track, perhaps the most rhythmic, "fuk": very aggressive from the start, it links to the previous session and destroys the pre-created melody to insert very deep basses and very sharp and fast background noises to create a great composition. The next track is "Outbak", this song constitutes a decrease in the tempo of the record, the sounds return to being slow and tiresome with truly nauseating (in an endearing sense of course) background atmospheres, "Ethnik" is the sixth and following session of the record, there are many percussions in it regularly stained by atmospheres tending towards the ethnic, there seems to be a very rapid acceleration in the record when "plasmatik" opens; a very psychedelic and dreamy composition but supported by rhythms similar to those of the previous track. The following track is "Goo" which is also the shortest of the work (just two minutes), returning to bland and rhythmic beats, the penultimate track is "Marbles" and it seems that our artist wants to end the record on a high note, the repetitiveness is truly exaggerated, the listener's mind resumes its journey into the world of the unknown, the background noises seem like a swarm of bees ready to strike the vulnerable ear of the daring listener (because to listen to a record like this, we must be very daring) the record ends with "Lasttrak" which incredibly contains voices and choruses of unknown nature, the atmospheres seem to rave with dizzying highs and lows, sharp sounds in progress almost make you jump until the carefully assembled instruments dislocate and the record slowly comes to an end.

This record is a real journey for the mind of anyone who dares to listen to it, it feels like continuously entering and exiting from another dimension and ultimately presents a great minimal work associated with environmental sounds, forming in some respects a truly distinct minimal/ambient record. I hope you enjoyed the review, and I recommend listening to this record.

Have a good day.