Kontakte - Transmitter/Receiver

by Paul Raven

published: 8 / 11 / 2007

Label: Enraptured Records
Format: 7"

Powerful futuristic synth rock on new vinyl only single from British electronic duo Kontakte

Review

You're out for a drive, speeding across a simulated urban landscape of glass and neon, the vast logos of consumer electronics brands flashing past the windows of your vehicle, which is itself, just like you, made entirely of digital signals, cascades of ones and zeros creating complexity out of the simplest possible statements there are ... OK, so that's a bit of a naïve cyberpunkish flight of fancy, but it's the first thing that flashed into my head as I listened to these two tracks by Kontakte. Based on layers of throbbing synthesizer bass and machine percussion, the upper surfaces are comprised of distant squalling guitars, almost psychedelic in tone, howling from over the horizon like lost wolves made from rusting metal. Much like the motorik music of Kraftwerk, who must surely be an influence, Kontakte's instrumental music brings to mind motion – not human motion, but the fast and dispassionate covering of distance that modern transport machinery makes possible. These songs are visions of the world seen at one remove, separated from your direct senses by the glass of the car window ... or your television, your computer screen. It's haunting, but impersonally so - a lurking sense of existential misery flits through the tunes, but it's curiously comforting, despite the gloomy samples from news broadcasts about the first atomic weapons. It's a celebration of the weed-forced cracks in the concrete of modernism, like the audio equivalent of a JG Ballard novel. Perhaps I've been living in the city too long ... but there's something about this that makes me want to hear more.