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Freeze combines dreamy rhythms and gentle melodies with cozy, comfortable drones and oscillations in a work that bridges the gaps between minimal techno and today's electronic avant garde.
From Signal to Noise Magazine
Michael Hartman (and Junko Okada -ed) of the electronics group TV Pow has established his own Kuro Neko imprint, and based on the label's first two offerings, he's got his eye on a number of different scenes. Motor is a man from Moscow who, whether working in abstraction or (as is the case here) with pulse-based forms, prefers austerity and minimalism. Though rhythms clearly sit at the center of Freeze, they are subtle and don't detract from the melodic elementss, the subtle electronic details, or the fulsome drones. I have very little clue as to Motor's relation to the larger Russian electronica scene, but this music (seven fairly brief tracks) is certainly pleasant enough. Working with basic elements, there is a lot of emphasis on panning, phase-shifting, and so forth. Set against the propulsive beats and occasional claustrophobically close crackles, Motor's pieces are effective. There is a kind of muffled, snow-packed quality to the sound. Whether on the densest groove pieces or on those like "p> A," where there is only the rush of wind or burbling of water, or the Fennesz-like tranquility of "...to home," Motor is effective in establishing sonic environments, surrounding you with sound.
From Wire #242
Investigating a grainier, more roughly milled selection of sounds than most producers of Russian electronica, Moscow's Motor combines shortwave crackles and softly resonating tones over an intimate selection of seven short tracks. Less ecstatic than some of his earlier releases on Holland's
Audio.NL label, Motor's latest material is reflective without becoming subdued, withdrawn without being overly enigmatic. Having dispensed with beats on the opener "Extra Virgin", by the time he reaches "...To Home", and extended meditation on how deeply muffled effects inevitable edge into one another, Motor has demonstrated how to create works of deeply felt emothional depth from the barest of means.
From Vital #406
As a cometh on a clear sky. That can be said of Russia's Motor. He released a brilliant 12" on
Audio.NL ('the most euphoric record on earth' as the Kompakt said) and had his own CD release 'Hexen' (later also on
Audio.NL), with more of this techno styled stuff. But from the fourth 12" on
Audio.NL things went into a different direction and
the sound shifted from say a Cologne style to a Berlin style. Also Motor started to use taped radio and TV signals and even did work solely built from those elements - a radical break with the past. But with the release of 'Horse Trax' (see Vital Weekly 360), he sort of
returns to more rhythmical music and it seems that what he set out on that CD, is now continued in 'Freeze'. There are hints of minimal techno, but held back and certainly not as euphoric as the first 12"s, in combination with a somewhat more glitchy styled drone music, such as the sine wave like piece 'p>a [4 Install]', which is almost
Ikeda like in a very subtle way. I must say I am even more pleased with this CD than with 'Horse Trax'. The pieces are more coherent and it works better as a whole, with the music shifting from the aforementioned sine waves to a ambient dubby title piece. Time to re-research Motor. (FdW)
From Neptune Records
The Moscow artist who has impressed with his dancefloor micro-euphoria on Audio NL changes gears a bit. On FREEZE he finds a cozy slot between state-of-the-art minimal techno and more evasive forms of avant electronics. Room sound tone generation gives way to arid clatter and low-key glitch beats. The ominous and bassy “Extra Virgin” sounds like the unraveling of a mummified Cabaret Voltaire. While “…To Home” has a pastoral beauty in its white noise winds. Motor weaves ghostly dubs and sound oscillations through his enigmatic rhythm daubs in a perfectly odd and engaging way.
From Weekend Records and Soap
Back when we opened our store, a nondescript CD from out of nowhere (Russia, to be precise) set our world on fire. Sounding almost like minimal techno from Cologne, but with a slightly darker edge, Motor got everybody bumpin' coast to coast. Three years later, Motor is back. 'Freeze' is a gentler affair, drifting along with a crispy, post-Basic Channel dubbiness, surely eminating from a laptop colored black. Nice score from this new Chicago label.
From Lumpen #91
In walking around my apartment, I counted over 50 electric motors hidden in all sorts of devices. Hair dryers, disk drives, pet cats. Everything that moves uses an electric motor to accomplish its movement. There are tiny motors inside my teeth that concentrate the magnetic flux in the air gaps between techno and the avant-garde. When I speak I am wirelessly communicating with ancient biblical technology, how about you?
From Grooves #13
Drawing together twin fascinations with post-Berlin dub-techno and isolationist drone tactics, Motor's Freeze is a slightly perplexing work that offers no new tactics, but manages to skirt just this side of carbon-copy production. Wheras many releases in thrall to Basic Channel stretch their ideas to the breaking point, Freeze makes some sideways glances, hinting at an abstractionist Other, inveigling beat-less mood pieces within three grides o hexed pulsation. Motor is also wise enough to keep things short - the album clocks in under 40 minutes.
The weightless ambience plotted through several of Freeze's song-arcs makes for rather slight listening: "P>A (4 Install)" and "/P.A4(v)" draw on the same resources but extrapolate little other than a feint tracery of drone logic splashed with minimalist endeavour. The melancholy crawl of "...To Home" is too close to early 1990s ambience, exhibiting indebtedness to AFX's Selected Ambient Works Volume II.
Motor's best work allows structure into the fray. The title track pivots on a muted rhythmic thump that reiterates the Chain Reaction label's volley of dub-sluiced (sic), echo-chamber house singles. Sending tiny snippets of dub illogic through a maze of delays, hinged to a barely there bass pulse, the track is spectralized through strange tactics: a rustling crab-grass of electronic interference ghosts the contours of the piece, intimating some kind of veiled knowledge.
The ultimate challenge for an artist working in such a restricted and consistently re-iterated zone of aesthetic production is to be able to map out a sound that bears trace elements of the history of the field while investing the work with an individual and idiosyncratic take on that chronology. Motor falls just short of fulfilling both demands, as the reference points are too clear for now. But there's a peculiar lilt to this music, a strange hint of character that bodes well for future recordings.
released December 10, 2003
Motor aka Vadim Ougrioumov, hails from Moscow.
