Album: Nihil Est in Intellectu
Artist: Notum
Label: Zhelozobeton
Catalogue no: ZHB-LXXIX
Tracklist:
1. Overreaction
of the Mind (feat. Kryptogen Rundfunk)
2. Queen
of Space
3. Orchidstore
Trip
4. Metamorphosis
5. Relocate
the Bear Safely
6. Lysogen
7. Focus
8. Threads
9. Ktaj
How best to encapsulate
the music of Berlin-based project Notum? Labels are at best an inconvenience
and an obstruction, as well as being pretty much useless in cases like this.
The artist him/herself describes it as ‘experimental/freeform’ but it’s so much
more than that. Certainly there are elements of experimentation and freeform
meanderings but we also have drone, noise, ambient, and shades of both the
early German experimentation of bands like Popul Vuh, Cluster, and Harmonia,
and the minimalist creations of the likes of LaMonte Young, Philip Glass, Terry Riley and Steve Reich. It
would be too lazy of me to say something as trite as ‘it’s difficult to pin
down’ but conversely the music here stubbornly refuses to stay within the lines
of conventional categorisation. Just take a look at the cover to this album – a
visual description if ever there was one of what we’re confronted with.
This is Notum’s debut full-length opus and it’s about as expansive and
all-embracing a calling card as you can imagine. Notum est in Intellectu (Nothing is in the Mind) brings us nine
tracks, all of which play around with sound and genre freely, but all threaded
through with the artist’s philosophy of not adhering to one particular
philosophical outlook. More than that, and very apparent, is Notum’s
playfulness and abstraction: here the musician is using sounds as if he were
playing with clay, moulding, pushing, pulling, stretching, and compressing.
Sometimes he creates patterns and rhythms (‘Focus’, ‘Threads’), or surprises us
with a sparse ambience (‘Queen of Space’), and at others erases any notions of
the orderly and accessible by the use of cut-ups and noisy chaos (‘Overreaction
of the Mind’), while at yet other points a mischievous humour shines through
(‘Relocate the Bear Safely’), almost as if he’s saying “I’m enjoying this and
so should you!”.
The album, when seen in the round, is a mix of the phantastique, phantasmagorical, the absurd, the comical, the
chaotic, and the cosmic. There’s so much to glean from these nine pieces. As an
introduction to the colourful world of Notum, it’s as good as any travelogue and
gazetteer you’re likely to want or need. Thoroughly recommended.
Psymon Marshall 2019