Over the past few years, Swiss electronic artist Benjamin Kilchhofer has quietly issued some fantastically interesting releases, culminating in last year’s eclectic and diaristic The Book Room for Toronto’s Marionette label. For Moto Perpetuo, Kilchhofer hooked up with Michael Anklin, whose adaptable drumming could be found on The Book Room. This session saw Kilchhofer sensitively interacting with his collaborator’s kit, using his modular system to augment and alter the varied percussive sounds that Anklin offered.

The result is a release containing seven idiosyncratic pieces that sit squarely between some of the most intricate of improvised music and adventurous, carefully-wrought electronics, with the results ranging from robust blocks of challenging sound to more complex, more meditative excursions. Throughout, there is a sense of Kilchhofer allowing Anklin to wander freely, sometimes adding obvious accompaniment and at other times being content to add subtle interventions that never detract from the underpinning structure.

The finest moments on this engaging collection arise on the skittish, unpredictable gestures of ‘Flor’ or the brooding, gloomy synthwork of ‘Unstet’. Like Benjamin Kilchhofer’s 2017 pairing with Hainbach, there’s a sense of this being a mere glimpse of the potentially infinite permutations possible from these intense interactions with Michael Anklin.

Moto Perpetuo by Kilchhofer Anklin is released by Marionette on March 15 2019.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2019 Further.