Orphax

Frans de Waard of Vital Weekly reviewed “Die Helden Sind Nicht Mehr”

ORPHAX – DIE HELDEN SIND NICHT MEHR (3″CDR, private)
Already a recording from six years ago, to the day: Sietse van Erve, also known as Oprhax, played on February 15th 2005 a concert at Theater Kikker (Utrecht, The Netherlands) and edited this in November last year. I am not sure why this is done, but surely Van Erve is quite fond of this recording. The title is a quote from the movie ‘Himmel Uber Berlin’, a favorite from Van Erve (and not seen by me). He also uses samples from the film. The music here is less drone based than his more recent work – as far as I can judge – and uses rhythms and big washes of synthesized sounds at the beginning. The piece is in two parts and both have a rhythm to it, in the second even a stripped down technoid one. Say, its all a bit more melodic than abstract, but it carries throughout that Orphax stamp on it: densely layered sound, dynamic and with sounds put all over the sound spectrum (perhaps also thanks to the mastering job by Jos Smolders) – deep bass end, cracklings at the high end, synths in the middle. Very nice, and sadly only eighteen minutes. As far as I was concerned this could have lasted longer. (FdW)
Address: http://www.orphax.com

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