Grischa Lichtenberger

It has taken musician, painter and installation artist Grischa Lichtenberger two years to follow up his excellent ~Treibgut EP for Raster-Noton's Unun series. Falling somewhere between the delicate sine-wave manipulation of Alva Noto and the more muscular sub-bass pulses of Emptyset, Lichtenberger's debut album is well worth the wait. And.IV (inertia) takes its title from a "fictionalized successor of the Baksan neutrino telescope," whatever that means. Lichtenberger's musical starting point is field recordings of his immediate environment and digital data sources, which are manipulated and taken apart until only fragments exist. Mere suggestions of sounds that could have their root in everyday soundscapes take on a mechanical, otherworldly feel. What's remarkable about the work not just how the organic is melded so seamlessly with the digital but how much groove is evident in the music, given its tonescape of digital glitch and processed, (supposedly) soulless data. This is especially apparent on tracks such as "1210_08_lv_4+" and "0112_01_LV_!" that contain an undeniably jazzy swing.