Customer Reviews

Escalo Frio

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If the world wasn't crazy, Otto von Schirach would be on TRL. His music is something to behold. Everyone seems to talk about Squarepusher, Venetian Snares, Richard Devine, Autechre, etc., etc.....Otto is in his own category. The music of Otto von Schirach is akin to Tom Waits driving an ice cream into a blender full of PCP and pickle juice. The man rhymes, sings, entones, and basically mangles speakers with extremly sharp and bright frequencies high and low. At high volumes, this music has a strange effect on my dog (and my dogs). Amazingly, Otto appears to be evolving quickly. I have the first 2 of the 3 12"'s that will combine to comprise Ear Juice Synthesis, and am highly impressed. They are steps ahead of Escalo Frio, which was leaps and bounds ahead of 8000 B.C. Otto is definately an artist to watch, furthering Schematic's reputation as one of the most consistent and best Electronic Music labels on Earth. I reccomend immediately buying everything in Schematic's catalog on vinyl and on CD. I did it, and look at me.

Really, Otto Von Schirach is an excellent entertainer, but this album seems to lack his fullness on every track. You get the feeling that he went for bizarre over quality. While this album is totally fun, it's lacking in fine tuning. Seeing as Maxipad Detention was flawless, this album could use the same fine toothed inspection. Keep the gold and drop some of the filler. At some points it seems some of the glitchier tracks were just mashing buttons. The points when he really focuses and takes things in unexpected directions make this album truly worth my money.

This is my favorite Otto Von Shirach. 21 tracks of schizo infused dsp tracks. If you are unfamiliar with dsp or Otto Von Schirach - you wouldn't like this. If you have an open mind about music, like hip hop and really enjoy different music, or something that's new - this might be the album for you.

There are so many good tracks on this that I won't try to review them, but know that his tracks range from hallucination glitch beats to quasi-hip hop style tracks. Otto likes to cut his tracks up, so you'll get about 2 or 3 minutes of hip hop and all of sudden you hear feedback or a static break (Educating the Sound Barrier). A lot of tracks feature very organic sounds though (Lotto, Coconut, Dr. Flamenco etc). Think, most of these tracks are made solely on a computer, or with computer integrated instruments - if you actually hear something resembling an organic tone, it's due to the skill of the producer.

I will mention that Mr. Egyptian Hologram is probably one of the best tracks that I've ever heard that are near the one minute mark. This track is pure hip - with very little tinkering by Otto.

The whole atmospher of Escalo Frio though is that of a horror movie. It's sounds like you're in some kind of nightmare - every sound is torture, every beat is that of a trembling heart. There is also some kind of circus theme from some of the tracks - like a freak show sound to it - but I think this adds to the horror movie atmosphere.

All in all this is by far the best Mr. Schirach has to offer - its really hard to describe what Otto sounds like without sounding too cheesy. My guess is, if you like hip hop, that is, you like hip hop in its music form - but you're not closed to something totally different you will love this.