Otto Von Schirach is, by some margin, the most excitable boy on the Schematic roster. While Richard Devine abandoned the notion of DSP fuckery as an end in itself with the brooding Aleamapper LP and Scott Herren has put his trad-IDM persona Delarosa and Asora on ice in favor of hip-hop stylings of Prefuse 73, Von Schirach continues his assault on stasis unabated with his second album, the frenetic Escalo Frio.
My first pass through Escalo Frio was most unpleasant. Roughly half of the 21 tracks here seem to me nothing more than Reaktor demonstration pieces, overflowing with an incredible array of sounds that call attention to themselves without ever working together to say anything interesting, or even coherent. Tracks like "Sasquash," "Coconut" and "Fog" are almost unbearable to sit through, consisting of an endless stream of self-consciously "weird" sounds that never coalesce, never swing, and can provoke no reaction beyond a steadily increasing annoyance. Quite honestly, I cannot understand the appeal of this post-Autechre spastic colonoscopy; it seems meaningless and terminally boring.
The only way I can make sense of the worst tracks on Escalo Frio is to place them into some kind cartoon music framework. Carl Stalling was, of course, the genius that wrote music for Warner Brothers' Loony Toons (he's frequently namechecked by John Zorn). Schirach's rapid changes and unfamiliar textures could possibly serve as the soundtrack to a parallel world built from alternate physics, much like the one alluded to by Stalling's genre-surfing and zany deployment of effects. Still, try as I might to imagine how this music might work for somebody else, I still don't believe it could ever work for me.
But these are the worst tracks I'm talking about-- the cluttered, aimless displays of programming technique that mar more than half this disc. Fortunately, a few tracks manage to make a better impression after a while. Of particular interest is Schirach's dabbling in cut-up hip-hop, reminiscent of Prefuse 73 without seeming like a rip-off. The criminally brief "Mr. Egyptian Hologram" (which features some production assistance from Matmos), for example, is a killer track, containing an MC sample twisted into rhythmic knots, nostalgic toy synths, and a forceful bass punch. Coming from a similar place but without the vocals is "Fabric," which is home to one of the record's few head-nodding rhythms and a production environment that allows the cutting electro rhythm room to breath. Still, in the end, these brief glimpses into Schirach's potential as an auteur of 23rd-century Jeep music only make the rest of the album that much more difficult to bear.
