Flaming Goats

I’m going to hazard a guess that the electronic project known as Mons Jacet and the experimental musician and visual artist Martin Rach are one in the same. Mons Jacet’s Alcoholics Go Melachonic (Clinical Archives) was one of my favorite netlabel releases back in 2008. So we fast forward several years and I should not be surprised that I’m a fast becoming a big fan of Rach’s experimental work. I quite enjoyed last year’s Trash Piano (Modisti) — read the review — and I am equally enjoying two new releases by Rach: To Flame the Light of Love (Modisti) and Year of the Goat (Editora do Porto).

As Rach’s recent work is very different from his work as Mons Jacet, these two releases are also vastly different. Year of the Goat is buy Martin Rach and his Imaginary Band. This Editora do Porto release is drunken orgy of jazz and other musical idiosyncrasies which shows the capability/incapability of score a band on a laptop as the music travels in a chaotic improvisational manner. (Incapability in the being used in the context of experimental music is always a positive, well, for me at least.)

The Modisti release, To Flame the Light of Love, alternates between two instruments — a piano and a tenor saxophone — played on different tracks though each combined with various other sound objects/software such a aluminum foil, glass, and speakers. To Flame the Light of Love  is in its essence a true experimental work. Rach is not only pushing our limits as an audience, one can tell that Rach is pushing his own limits as well.

The image above is a detail of a visual artwork by Martin Rach. I believe this painting is called Virus.