Lemke, John
Nomad Frequencies
Intent on refining his sound toward a more minimal, bolder style, John set out to limit his sonic palate to a handful of carefully chosen elements. At the centre of this new direction remains the muted piano already introduced on his debut, but in a much more purified and raw form. This organic base is adorned by the warm fuzzing and wavering of analogue synthesisers, tape echoes, meditative tuning forks, field recordings from John's 'exile' period and percussion based on his rigid approach to sampling, which started developing on 'Walizka'. The guiding principle of his orthodox style of recording and sampling is to only use home-made sounds by utilising his own field recordings, applying contact microphones or hydrophones to objects and instruments, running them through different kinds of speakers and re-recording the sounds to arrive at a 'lived in' quality, often misunderstood as plainly 'lo-fi'. Touches of viola and woodwinds parts (Kim Moore of WOLF and Andrew Baker respectively) provide melody fragments and subtle details throughout the journey. With John's healthy disregard for genre boundaries, the array of influences on 'Nomad Frequencies' is vast, but never over-powering. From the meditative tuning fork that starts proceedings on 'Of Elsewhere', the dub echoes to the hints of minimalism, free jazz explosions to the Lynchian atmospherics, all elements serve nothing more than the album's narrative journey between friction and harmony, best appreciated in its entirety. A rhythmic backbone collides with rich ambience and melody, often infectious and jarring at the same time, forging a soulful whole which most likely only reveals its true self after multiple spins. For fans of Boards Of Canada, Pole, Hauschka, Four Tet, The Notwist