We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Volume Two

by BEAST

/
  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    LP version on Pre-Echo Press.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Volume Two via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 4 days

      $18 USD or more 

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $7 USD  or more

     

1.
Look Out 07:28
2.
Chase Scene 08:43
3.
False Bottom 08:54
4.

about

Pre-Echo Press is pleased to announce Beast, a new project & moniker from acclaimed Sound/Visual Artist, Koen Holtkamp (Mountains, Thrill Jockey). A somewhat radical departure from Holtkamp’s previous working modes where sound has typically been treated as an edifice to be sculpted, the works here are far more concerned with the generative possibilities of rhythm. The pieces on Beast developed out of Holtkamp’s creation last year of an audio-visual performance that centers on the physical properties of light via 3D laser projections. Rather than simply make a visual element for a piece of music (or vice-versa), Holtkamp created a system that intricately links every aspect of the performance, from the modular synth and virtual instruments to the constantly shifting projections of his “Color Phase” light installations. As form follows function, the sounds created here are by necessity more immediate, more off the cuff, more pattern oriented, and explore a much further range of dynamics than the somewhat amorphous (yet still gorgeous) work he’s become well known for. The work harkens back to Process Music of the 1970s, being simultaneously minimal & maximal (think Jon Gibson), as well as the the lush pop-minimalism of early 1980s Soft Verdict, all the while remaining thrillingly contemporary.

Beast Volume One was recorded in real time and is presented with minimal edits to divide it into three pieces, and is the slightly rawer & more abandoned of the two volumes, while Beast Volume Two is a more “in studio” version, and as such retains a more palpable air of elegance while still remaining a side of the same coin.

"Koen Holtkamp embraces the lush maximalism of ‘70s ’Process Music’ and mannered ‘80s pop minimalism as BEAST, making a radical but logical departure from his atomically-detailed modular synth recordings released by Type, Thrill Jockey and Umor Rex over the past decade. It's the most rhythmically focussed material in his catalogue.

The four parts of Volume Two were generated and edited in the studio and are arguably bound tighter than their predecessor, resulting in more crystalline structures and a more puckered sort of elegance. That’s clearly in effect with the lissom curves and clipped, airborne waltz of Look Out, while the glittering cascade of Chase Scene sweetly define that paradoxical feeling of poised stasis within a rapid flux, harnessed only by its dembow-like rhythm, before the lofty brass of False Bottom seems to describe a sea cruise where you see the cosmos reflected in a nocturnal lagoon, and Taipei Hideaway gives breathlessly ecstatic close recalling the black MIDI rushes of TCF or Lubomyr Melnyk meditating on a particularly strong swedger.

It all adds up to an impeccable example of that rare effect when listening to electronic music, of glimpsing an underlying code or pattern of transcendence that’s pretty much life-affirming in its revelation."
- Boomkat

credits

released October 5, 2017

Recorded in Taipei, TW and Brooklyn, NY, 2016 / 2017
Music and laser images by Koen Holtkamp
Mastering by Rafael Anton Irisarri

Image retouching by Mark Doherty
Graphic design by Joe Gilmore

LP released via Pre-Echo
2017 PE-08

www.koenholtkamp.com
www.pre-echo.com

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Koen Holtkamp Brooklyn, New York

contact / help

Contact Koen Holtkamp

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Volume Two, you may also like: