David / Blumenthal - Les Brises D'orient / Les Minarets - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

*NOW AVAILABLE ON CD!!! Expanding on the magnetic, minimalist post-punk frontier first chartered on their 2020 Goner debut, Optic Sink return with their second album, Glass Blocks. Hot on the heels of their recent EP on Spacecase Records, the Memphis trio of Natalie Hoffmann, Ben Bauermeister, and Keith Cooper ventured out to Lawrence, Kansas to record at the home studio of Caufield Schnug (Sweeping Promises).The resulting seven originals and a rendition of LiLiPUT's A Silver Key Can Open An Iron Lock, Somewhere define Optic Sink and their remarkable style with a clarity and power seldom realized in a studio setting. Hoffmann and Bauermeister command the high end of the mix with a gamut of perfectly dialed synth and percussive tones while Cooper's bass serves as rhythmic anchor. There's far more to dive into, whether it's the cold, driving beat of InchModelesqueInch or the minimal, percussive brilliance heard on InchGlass BlocksInch. Perhaps the best part of the formula is the sheer amount of natural energy that gleams through the mix. Like a warm refraction of musical chemistry and originality, Optic Sink have struck gold with Glass Blocks.

This product is an authorized manufactured on demand CD-R

Simon Wallfisch writes of this new InchSupressed music (or 'Entartete Musik' or 'Verfemte Musik'), music and musicians smeared by the Nazis' dark, ideologically-motivated hatred, has developed into an artificial genre of it's own, throwing together composers of completely different musical backgrounds and, it must be said, varying degrees of quality, into the same bucket. This must change. We risk missing the true qualities, nuances and pedigree of individual composers' voices, as well as the cultural preoccupations that united them (as in the case of this album, the common fascination in the early twentieth century with translations of Chinese and Persian poetry). The deliberate inclusion of Richard Strauss (whose political allegiances are questionable) is because I wish the listener to hear beyond the names, beyond the painful historical facts and savor the incredible sound world created by these musical cousins. It is my wish that, by presenting all of these neglected composers as equals, we can begin to restore them to their rightful place, where they belonged all along, in our collective musical Consciousness.Inch