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CD
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STRIKE 157CD
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Bremen, Germany-based artist Ulli Bomans presents Sort By Dragging, his second album under his given name. His first, Riven (STRIKE 149LP, 2014), followed a long series of music productions under his Schieres alias and numerous 12"s, albums, remixes, and tours together with Marco Haas aka T.Raumschmiere and their band of electronic thunder experiments, Shrubbn!! This time, the listener is lost completely in the gloomy, captivating worlds of sound. Sinister at times, Sort By Dragging recalls Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis, while also bearing parallels to Bomans's sculptural and visual art in its passage from Bremen to Detroit and back. Bomans clears the way with opener "Detroit Tape Noize," as the gloomy intro of noises and clicks gives way to a distant beat that functions more as a moving wall than a drum pattern. Sounds are created from noise; rhythm from the recovery of movement -- and somehow are condensed into a track, a song not without melody, resonating like an alarm in an ocean of noise. On "Cheap Seats" the listener even encounters a real drumbeat, which somehow drags and pushes a Vermona home organ sound into the echo loop. "One Piece Missing" then brings a clear piano voice into this world of sound. "Screensaver" concludes the work with ringing and roaring under a strangely amazing piano. CD in digipak with booklet.
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LP
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STRIKE 149LP
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Riven by Ulli Bomans comes straight from the heart of Shitkatapult, both personally and musically. As Schieres and Shrubbn!! (with T.Raumschmiere), Ulli Bomans has been releasing uncompromising electronic music since the day the Berlin label was founded. He made it onto Strike001 with Shrubbn!! (V/A Cozmick Suckers Vol. 01). But Bomans' main work is actually as a visual artist in Hamburg (and Bremen), which is also how the cover of Riven originated -- an illustration of his work "Missing Ships" from his last exhibition ("Spoilpark") in Bremen. His work consists mostly of large-scale collages, which are aptly referred to as urban sampling and are closely related to his music production. So it seemed more than logical for a late debut album to forgo the alias and come with an authentic author's album as Ulli Bomans. Electronic music thought through to the end as an inner journey, through the tattered cities in which we live. "So What?" takes us deep down within (the city, the music, the inhabitants). The cover image and its track "Missing Ships" goes even further, taking no detours, carving up the whole, babbling, and projecting a reality onto the imaginary. "Barbara" takes it to the point, with half-beat, slow melodies emanating from submerged cities. And so it continues, abstractly normal. Then "$55" and "Curb Your Ego" flow almost like the music of Shrubbn!!, through margins and electronic streams and threads, full, empty, musical. On the flipside of the record -- conceived chiefly for vinyl -- the tables are turned (somewhat) and it goes all out into club sound, dodges around house and techno, positively and deliberately -- as psychotropic drugs, as hook, as heart, and as the urban sampling of an existence that we are all living. "Dirty Yoga" gets into a truly joyous groove and just carries on, while "Spoilpark" and "On Mars" bring this album together in an amazing symphony of electronic music.
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