Mohn is the newest collaborative project for two German techno mainstays: Wolfgang Voigt (aka Studio 1, Mike Ink, Gas) and Jörg Burger (aka the Bionaut, Triola, the Modernist). The duo's debut self-titled album sticks to territory in between the steady, physical pulse of "Tiefental," from last year's Total 12 compilation, and "Manifesto," a damn near beat-less, immersive storm-cloud of ambience from Pop Ambient 2012.
These two gentlemen have collaborated previously on at least one landmark techno album—and they remain close friends and Kompakt figureheads besides—but Mohn marks a significant step into new territory for both. Wolfgang Voigt, best known for his four albums as Gas around the turn of the century, has been making forward-thinking "minimal techno" music (sometimes more minimal, sometimes more techno) for over 20 years. Jörg Burger takes a more far-reaching approach to music: what he gains in pop appeal and sonic variety as compared to Voigt, he loses in formalist consistency of vision. (This is also the key reason that, although both are veterans of their craft, Voigt has maintained a more prominent critical profile.) Together, Burger and Voigt released one stone-cold masterpiece of 1990s electronic music: 1996's Las Vegas, credited to Burger/Ink, which found Voigt processing Burger's guitar and bass foundations into minimalist, long-form waves of sound.
Like John Talabot earlier this year, who switched monikers to signal a stylistic shift, making music under the Mohn name allows Voigt and Burger a chance to shed preconceptions—at least as much as possible—and strike out in an unexplored direction. It also indicates to fans that Mohn, their self-titled debut, is not meant to be heard as a strict follow-up to Las Vegas. (At Mohn's debut live performance in 2007, no material from Las Vegas was played.) Mohn is set apart by its blend of organic and mechanistic sounds, and the ways in which those sounds push and pull at each other, combine, clash, and interweave. Much of Voigt and Burger's previous music leans to the organic side, evoking images of natural phenomena, whereas the boldest tracks on Mohn sound cold, mechanized, made of steel, as if sound-tracking the Industrial Revolution—or the disappearance of a world without machines.
Not everything here has a discernible rhythm: the less forthright tracks lean toward the deep rumble of "Manifesto," Mohn's contribution to Pop Ambient 2012 a few months ago that more closely resembles Lull's dark-ambient '90s work than techno. Opener "Einrauschen" barely registers a pulse, whereas "Seqtor 88" splits the difference between stark, icy techno and the humid ambience of Voigt's Gas project. "Ambientôt" takes inspiration from Neu! and the German experimentalists of the '70s, with a faint krautrock stutter in its step. Most of the tracks come across like dance music on a morphine drip, reducing all rhythms to a slow-motion smear of thick ambient sound, with the organic/analog aspects of Mohn's music fighting for a gasp of air amongst the digital fog. There's something about self-titled songs that tend to encapsulate an artist's modus operandi (see Black Sabbath, Talk Talk, Slowdive, Angels of Light...) and "Mohn" is no different, folding a chilly, narcotic heartbeat into a mountain of delay, echo, looped ambience, and low-end punch.
The most memorable song on Mohn puts a darkly sexual twist on this sound: "Ebertplatz 2020" is barely techno—minimal in structure, but maximal in sound. It starts out with a glittering beat before a thick, gritty slab of extremely low-end bass frequency forces its way into the frame. Of all things, it takes on the same animalistic character as the throb and thrust of NIN's "Closer" (which I maintain is underrated, despite Reznor failing to make interesting music for the last 10-15 years). Burger and Voigt take a subwoofer-busting low-end frequency, then smear it and stretch it out drastically, combining physically jarring bass with the twinkling high-end and a sheet of ambient fuzz. This all conveys a very distinct mood without resorting to sexually suggestive lyrics or cliché: it sounds like two machines fucking, and wouldn't make a bad soundtrack for people doing the same thing. (Is it any coincidence that Mohn is pronounced "moan?")
All things considered, this is a stellar album. Mohn sounds incredibly immersive under a pair of headphones, to the extent of blocking all outside stimuli (earlier this week, I used it to drown out Katy Perry and "Party Rock Anthem" at a girls' birthday party at a roller-skating rink—no small feat). Much of the album can be a challenging listen at close distance, but has just enough melody and familiarity to hold interest, as well as enough ambience to fade into the background if so desired. Most impressively, though, Mohn is yet another feather in the caps of Burger and Voigt, who chose not to repeat their landmark work of 15 years past, but to look outside their bag of established tricks and again push the limits of what electronic, techno, and ambient music can be.
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