[Translated from the original French via Google]
“We discover Markus Mehr with this live album, a live transcription of the Off album which concluded the trilogy In / On / Off published between January 2012 and January 2013 through Hidden Shoal Recordings. The concert was recorded in November 2012 as part of the festival Time Zones Bari (Italy) that will have its 30th anniversary this year. In the image of the album, this live is in the form of a single piece of about 45 minutes, a long dive between mechanical loops, drones and arid textures.
The introduction is rather misleading since the rest of the concert has little to do with these loops generated by a pedal effect samplant agreement and attack the strings of a guitar. An early set particularly arid, disturbing, whose sounds make us think more industrial music as a peaceful atmosphere. But gradually the sound is more diffuse, loops blur, evolving into a mechanical drone. The tempo is just suggested by low residues while some try to escape vocalizations sound magma. Gradually fades the relative hardness and after about ten minutes, after some wavering voice, ambient layers of both muffled and crackling take over, particularly assertive. It then approaches a melancholy ambient glitch clearly recalling the work of Fennesz.
Over this long piece vocabulary changes quite regularly, avoiding fatigue. To remain consistent, the atmosphere is a certain melancholy sweetness, using initially slicks cinematographic allusions before integrating more twisted sounds and other snaps, allowing the same time to restart the machine that could falter on this transition. We then noticed a phase that suspends tablecloths and drones turn loop at the rate of a cardiac monitor beeps reminiscent. Later, low saturated, announce a return to dry sound, a kind of drone to techno beats until the fateful break.
The last fifteen minutes like a concentrate of the recipe used previously by the musician. arid melodic tablecloths, minimal and hypnotic ambient stasis while a certain darkness intrudes and come and give you goosebumps.
Live recording, so applause at the end of a concert set that we will live that through this album but was certainly one of the highlights of this festival.”