radian » tg11
artist: radian
title: tg11
label: mego/rhiz,
2000 (CD – mr 001)Martin Brandlmayr: drums, vibraphone,
samples and editing
Stefan Németh: synthesizers
John Norman: bassrecorded at Amann Studios, Vienna
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“Getting electronic music and the live-band dynamic to bed down together can make for an awful lot of ruffled sheets and awkwardly splayed limbs, but Austrian three-piece Radian has achieved a workable arrangement. Drummer-programmer-and-vibraphonist Martin Brandlmayr and bassist John Norman lay wobbly and wiry free-sounding rhythms as capably as your favorite Chicagoan entities. They keep things tight enough to groove yet just relaxed enough not to tangle up Stefan Nemeth’s squirrelly spurts and schpritzes of high-frequency digital and analog noise. TG11 delivers on the promise of 1999’s exciting, deservedly buzz-borne “Radian” EP. The trio’s excellent follow-up evidences an even stronger sense of group rapport and intrepid spirit. “R4” twitches to furious, desperately funky life beneath Nemeth’s carpet of charged crackle and Brandlmayr’s diffident drum-and-vibes flourishes. Here, on the bewitchingly kinky title track, on the just-barely ballasted “Tornio,” and on “Okazaki Fragment,” Radian’s surprisingly surefooted balancing act invites parallel with no less than the gymnastic floor show of ’73-’74 Can. Elsewhere, Nemeth takes the upper hand. He issues cavity-cleansing kiloherz on “Sinus 440,” “Ucotherm,” and “Kadjet,” goading his cohorts into negotiations resembling I.S.O.’s perfectly realized improv directive. Norman and Brandlmayr steer clear of close contact with the caustic fallout of Nemeth’s Korg MS 10 on “Spektr” and seek immediate shelter from his white-hot pelting on “Moveg.” As impressive as TG 11’s main course is (and we’re talking about a disc immediately in Top-10 of 2000 contention), the best is saved for last. The concluding “I/E” presents Radian as more of an integrated and ego-free organ, sublimating vibe harmonics, string vibrations, and electronic effluent in a truly radiant (sorry) electro-acoustic coda that very nearly matches Viennese improv paragon Polwechsel move for move in measured, metamusical mastery.”[Gil Gershman, Motion State 51, 2000]
“Vienna superlabels Mego and Rhiz merge to give a schizo kiss to the second release from their old hometown trio Radian: Martin Brandlmayr, Stefan Nemeth and John Norman. Initially you might tick this off as by-rote electronica but deeper listening reveals a more unconventional grouping of acoustic instruments (bass, vibraphone, percussion) with digitones and analogue programming. The result is a real-time textural to-fro in the best traditions of improv: steely delicacy, violent courtesies, and an overall arc where you feared there was none. Half tactile, half Techno — pleasingly uncanny, like a robot’s massage.”[Ian Penman, The Wire, 2000]
