Album Details

• Artist: Rant
• Album: Land
• Label: schraum
• Year of Release: 2011
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2011-08-12

An improvisational conversation between guitar and drums, "land" often sounds intimate in ways that make the listener feel voyeuristic. But by exploring sound ranging from pop to single note focus, rant offer a wide range of what is available within silence and space, and the music that is possible to find with an ear willing to hear almost anything as song.

Guitarist Torsten Papenheim and drummer Merle Bennett explore color and tone, and use melody as well as abstract experiments. Songs like "Radik" and "Rasch" initially sound like tuning, but there is a pointillist precision to these spare experiments in tone.  "Sternh" has a muted, nourish feel, full of reverb, echo and silence.

On "Krupunder" one can almost hear echoes of Krautrock, even early metal, their spacey, methodical soundscapes stripped to simple drum and guitar expression, and "Hunderer" surprises with a pop groove at the end. Though minimal, the closing "Gees" has the most form, in addition to being, at just over five minutes, the longest track. Papenheim's guitar channels the core of shoegaze with melodic, fuzzy drone and simple but spacious lines. Bennett serves as counterpoint throughout, but with so much space within which to work, his playing is no less rich.

"land" is rant's third release, and many of these songs were honed live, a foundation that allows Bennett and Papenheim room to explore and experiment with their ideas. They succeed with quiet, but often dizzying awareness of the sounds within their environment waiting to be exposed.

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