If a good life equals proper balance then a recent retail experience put this into sharp focus. First, it must be said it is not easy today to be a fan of music, real music, the kind created as artistic expression and not just for commercial consideration. The aural artillery fired at you in public places is overwhelming and is as vapid as it is constant. The world needs far fewer acts of the alphabet soup variety.
After the privacy of a decent bout of silence was over, an injection of art was needed. Something that forms a challenge and benefit scenario, something like Kosmonautik Pilgrimage by those provocateurs Anchor and Burden. This is music that has a logic all its own and dares one to find a place for it in their analogue. It presents an application that band members Markus Reuter, Alexander Paul Dowerk, Bernhard Wöstheinrich and Asaf Sirkis are more than happy to provide.
In the same way, that happy stories dissipate more quickly in the ether and stern stuff sticks around, the tracks here have an abrasiveness that gives you more to grip, a friction that assures that the intention does anything but slip by unnoticed. The musicianship is such that the landscape reaches into far vistas and drummer Sirkis does a remarkable job of holding it all together.
Kosmonautik Pilgrimage is an auditory offensive that provides provocation and equal remuneration. I can only imagine the kind of commercial establishment that would dare put music like this on in the background and what wares would be on offer. Litmus strips for the coming apocalypse, or perhaps current generating devices to open the synapsis to thoughts of the new?
Rob Hudson
www.facebook.com/moonjunerecords2
