the first pcn - album Arowana-Sessions, released in 2010 as a
mini-cd-rom-edition at the Bodensatz, will be re-released. This time
as nice Digipac-CD as well as stream and download on Bandcamp or at
Minor Mailorder Online Shop
.
The origin of this album goes back to 1999. First attempts in PC produced electronic
music matured over the years to an ambitious work. Here, too, the
stylistic range is wide, albeit focused - with the styles Electro/Techno,
E-Metal, Minimal Music/Classical, Industrial and Ambient - and back
an arc is made, which describes an intense journey quasi to the
emotional Nadir and back. Bipolar...
available at
Bandcamp
,
minor.de
or
Riviera
-Shop in Munich
Plastic Bomb Nr.120 3/22:
"It's not that I don't appreciate purely instrumental music. However, most of it works best for me with the visual background.
Apart from songs like "Guns of Navarrone" by the Skatalites or the like... Christian Nothaft's predominantly electronic work,
which he has been releasing under the name pcn since 2011, also smells strongly of celluloid to me. It would probably be a damn good
soundtrack for several film genres at the same time, with the sometimes quite intricate soundscapes that are created here.
An interesting affair for cineastes for sure, while enjoying the "Arow(an)a" Sessions", one or the other film runs in your head cinema
even without drugs..." (Basti)
Side-Line - Magazine:
"Genre/Influences: Cinématique, Experimental.
...
+ + + : This kind of production needs to be accompanied and/or completed by visual arts.
One of the tracks (cf. “Almost.All”) reminds me a bit of the sadness from the music you can hear in
Pedro Almodóvar films. I’m just missing an accordion. The opening cut is another interesting track
for the retro-like sound treatments.
– – – : Most of the tracks are rather repetitive and quickly becoming monotonous.
And I’m not a huge lover of the rapid, nervous sequences mixed with fast rhythms.
Conclusion: PCN is not the most accessible sound experience, but is worthy of examination for Experimental heads.
Best songs: “Almost.All”, “NToR/tm”.
Rate: 5 1/2."
( side line )
Review Skug 2011:
"Sometimes music comes along that sounds as if it has just slipped out of a message in a bottle,
a time hole, without being retro or part of a (taking place, coming)
revival. It simply spreads out in a quasi-singular way, sometimes has tics and quirks like only children
and is not averse to a certain autism. The "Arowana Sessions" by the Munich musician Christian Nothaft,
recorded between 1998 and 2010, fall precisely into these categories, only to fall out of them again immediately.
Basically, we are listening to midi files put together with Cubase and the cheap sound card Arowana, which gives the title.
Actually a terrain between 8bit and "Atari sound" that seems to have been grazed long ago. Only that that none of this plays
a role here (and if it does, then as what has to stay outside). At one point in the booklet Christian Nothaft calls his tracks
"E-Metal" and leaves open what this "E" stands for. Indications between "seriousness", "electronics",
"ecstasy", "excess", "deceleration" in the tracks that fluctuate back and forth between dance floor and minimal.
But "metal" is not so easy to explain either. Brute and hard may be the idea behind it, but why are we dealing with "string quartets",
pianos and other classical pianos and other classical instruments, and less with down-tuned strangle guitars? Reading metal as a
radical form of avant-garde, with open ears in all directions. rock idioms long behind it, might also be the key here. But less
as a simple translation mechanism (for example into the aforementioned "string quartets"), but rather as a trans-formation into
the possibilities and limitations of a cheap sound card. The point here is simply (and just as simply as effectively) about
software as an instrument. In order to achieve the often of a music that plays itself. What distinguishes the "Arowana Session(s)"
from similar undertakings is a kind of serious cheesyness of the sounds, which sometimes sounds, which are sometimes reminiscent
of the somewhat eerie and whimsical sounds of old music music machines and music boxes."
(Didi Neidhart)
Arowana on air @ WFMU:
shows with arowana-content on wfmu.org
WFMU JA In The AM with John Allen Playlist from September 30, 2022
WFMU Polyglot with Jesse Dorris Playlist from July 26, 2022
WFMU Radioactivity with Abbie From Mars Playlist from August 21, 2022
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