Written by: Dave Cantrell
Stranger things have happened (strangers things are always happening) but one of the possibly most startling facts within the worldwide palette of musical brushstrokes is that Portland, that once hideaway hipster town turned (supposedly) anarchist hotspot, is home to one of the most unabashed and truly inspired krautrock bands in the whole of the kosmische universe. Craftily named – oh where or where did that lost ‘o’ in ‘motorik’ disappear to? – the group lovingly known as MØTRIK has been almost surreptitiously releasing quietly astonishing autobahn soundtrack LPs on the devotedly local Jealous Butcher label for seven years now. A deliriously held open secret, the work the four-piece (Cord Dave Erik Lee) have been producing has, no surprise, led to a devoted sect of local MØTRIK followers that, one imagines, lift a foaming stein of dunkel every time a new album emerges. But, like most if not all locally held secrets, the magic of MØTRIK has spread far beyond the Portland city limits and the band’s following is now following them from postal codes far and wide. This is what happens when the groove magic you are dispensing traverses various borders by appealing to Conny Plank devotees of whatever nationality.
Messing with our minds (as usual) in the subtlest, most seductive ways, new album MØØN: The Cosmic Electrics of MØTRIK finds this tight band of time-(and mind-)warpers taking that already inventive, well-developed template and expanding it outward into new, adventurous shapes. Throbbing here, glistening there, never by any means abandoning the sonic Teutonic roadmap etched into their DNA but rather sketching in a few typically daring side trips, MØØN arrives as that rare album that manages to be exactly what their fans wanted but not exactly what they might have expected. For every obliquely identifiable Neu!-alism or flash of Canniness there’s a touch of ‘other’ tucked into the mix, be it the funk insistence of “Red Eye,” the hypnotic Reichian minimalism that opens “Yellow Eye” or the almost neo-gothic classical sweep of fog that backdrops closer “Sonik Rug.” Regardless, this being MØTRIK, them of sound heart and dexterous hands, the album captivates in every way we’ve come to expect, not least on the track we bring you today. Persistent, entrancing, leading us by a gentle electrified lead into its commanding clutches, album-opener “Silver Twin” sweeps one into its chrome jetstream by utilizing the band’s secret weapon, a smooth laser beam of what can only be heard as ‘soul’ in all its persuasive, deeply groove-oriented glory. At first glance an odd word, perhaps, to describe the hold these four cagey gentlemen exert over their listeners with what feels like effortless space-age ease but we swear on a stack of Moog Modulators that that’s exactly the term that fits what they do and fits like a stainless steel-chromium glove. We’ve only got two words for you as you prepare for this most pleasant lift-off: dig it. [pre-order MØØN: The Cosmic Electrics of MØTRIK right…here]
