Active for around 7 years, the enigmatic German collective from Hannover, FRTG13, return, reduced in this occasion to three units, Daniel Ringwelski, Dominik Haensel & Der Nachtportier, with the new EP, “Supersymmetrie”, released as usual, as their name suggests, last Friday the 13th.
A collaboration made up of a swinging bunch of freaks from Hannover‘s lo-fi underground scene with a ‘sound ranging from noise rock to dark psychedelia, based on improvisation, recorded in one take, straight and raw from the rehearsal room’.
Somehow related to an apparently obscure intersection of projects, from the longstanding post-punk trio Get Synchronized (that included both Dominik and Daniel), the one-man minimal wave venture by the other member Der Nachtportier to the, seemingly featuring again the latter, electro /EBM solo act Fear Administration.
The new five, mainly instrumental, tracks, just the moreover excellent title track sticks to the typical song format, mark a departure from the band’s alternative guitar-driven sound, with a more widespread use of synthesizers, straddling between moody coldwave and sci-fi synthwave with subtle kraut leanings, replete by a sense of cosmic anguish drawing from everyday desolation and uncertainty.
The immersive retro-futuristic “Das kosmische Grauen / The Cosmic Horror” triggers syncopated, snapping snare beats that bounce along with heart-throbbing, racing bassline, amid sparse sharp double claps, to stir unsettled mystery around distant, decaying vocal samples’ indecipherable fearful and secretive whispers, slathered by flashing airy synth chords and swirling bright synth stabs, pierced through by reverberant wistful guitar chimes, wax and wane in urgent, glaring giddy disconnected frequencies into the dangerous deception of unseen ‘cosmic horror’, whose obscure, threatened all-consuming power drag like a magnetic force impossible to escape from.
A brilliant EP that will be relished further after repeated listening, highly recommended.
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