Rather than exhaust itself in the practical function of maintaining such a connection, and thus being absorbed in the persona, the inverse proves the case, and Baumgartner himself is absorbed in the music.
Moments of unselfconscious expression are borne more from the sheer joy of juggling shapes; communication via associative leaps are informed by processes beyond conscious thought, and as such some passages are just plain gorgeous. Such is the central seed of the first composition, a luminescent crescent bruised by plenty of unearthly microtonal detail, as hovering mutant variations on electronics move in erratic orbits. It's effortless succession of intensifying sonic densities, periodically brought to sudden, juddering halts or culminating in a scene of highly flammable ultra violence, always hint at dark alchemical processes, which promise a motley of unspeakable listening experiences.
What remains continues to keep its distance, both spatially and humanly. Tracks make abrupt shifts in direction as disconcerting new sound elements arrive and commingle. During the second piece, a dark concatenation made up from digitally morphed instruments and found sounds, a brutal heaviness is betrayed, in whose wake freeform constellations of sound and indistinct half-notes and tones veer between anxiety and flotation tank calm. Though packing a certain emotional heft, the piece unfurls in view of no particular end, but continues in a state of metamorphosis, the sounds birthing fascinating twists or otherwise spinning themselves into delirious exhaustion.
In fact, in many places the unreal tones are marshaled into a sort of fugue that has the appearance of having made up its own rules on the hoof. Thus, as Baumgartner trims back the moniker, the nudity that prevails proves to be but a sort of second skin, on whose unctuous surface, sounds, compelled by their own force, undergo an incessant cycle of combination and recombination. Far from an emotional exhibition of a personal sort, it's a collection of sounds whose inventiveness and ingenuity survive its bleakest moments.
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