专辑简介

by Thom JurekUsing Franz Kafka's writings as an inspirational and thematic backdrop, composer and electronica pioneer Raz Mesinai has created a virtually indescribable wonder of an album. Here, Mesinai, who is a painstaking composer -- particularly for strings and percussion -- employs Mark Feldman, Jaqueline Leclair, Michael Moser, Ralph Farris, Ann de Villiers, and Erich Schoen-Rene to record his pieces with nuance, subtlety, and grace. Mesinai also plays percussion on many of them, then samples his own work (these very recordings in fact) and superimposes bits and pieces of them over the played sections, creating a deep, haunting, sometimes nightmarish comedy of sonic ideas. But then, if you are doing Kafka, that's what you're supposed to be doing, right? Nonetheless, in musical scenes from The Penal Colony, The Trial, The Castle, and others, Mesinai uncovers several important discoveries in his investigation of Kafka. First, there is his Jewishness, brought out here by the striated harmonics associated with ancient musical styles read through the broken refraction of first Kafka's and then Mesinai's lens. Next, there is the sense of displacement and wandering, a musical restlessness that … » Read more