TRACK | Mantarochen – Porzellan

5/5 golden merles

“Porzellan” is formidable synth wave/post-punk from the overflowing chalice of Leipzig. This is all about the multifaceted arrangement of melodic layers, interwoven and unfolding in a organic and fundamentally convincing manner. The immediate complexity doesn’t overwhelm the feeling of the thing while in pursuit of its own novelty. That’s a kind of magic trick, both rare and good to behold.

I’ve been in a rut with respect to consumption; everything I hear sounds captive to its influences instead of supported or branching out from them, mostly exhausted, redundant. But Mantarochen’s track here is a stark contrast, taking the general genre cues and with an outright devotion to melody breaking out of that pattern by some novel means.

With a handful of elements, symbolically rendered (Digi-drums braced between synths octaves and the bass beneath, the poised utterances), you too can recreate the world. Or at least an amusing and convincing representation of it.

Beast or man, I studied German at High Schools and Universities in the United States. This means I have acquired the vocabulary of a pigeon after filling out various pulp-smelling workbooks at ungodly hours of the morning. But what I can comprehend sounds agreeable and fits the mood established in the murk of its movements.

The price is whatever you want it to be on the bandcamp. It was found on side B of 12xu’s Verspannungskassette cassette #58.

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