“It seems as if Dmytro Fedorenko is more active as Kotra than before. Following his solo release ‘Cicada’, reviewed in Vital Weekly 1104 and his collaboration with Edward Sol (Vital Weekly 1111) there is yet another new solo release called ‘Freigeist’. Quite a short release, lasting just under thirty minutes, but maybe that is because it is also available on vinyl? In his ‘mission statement’ Kotra writes that he wants to “explore his own and audiences perception limits, how music can affect body and mind at the most extreme points” and it was “always a way of radical transformation through the sound, as one of the most powerful abstract tools of communication. Pushing extremely loud waves to audience Kotra offers another look into irritating and disturbing physical face of music, next to it’s aesthetics side”, and on ‘Freigeist’ we find five examples of this of this radical approach, but one has to keep in mind that playing this at home is something different than hearing this in a concert situation, assuming, at least, that one doesn’t has such a set-up at home. Usually the music of Kotra is a combination of harsh rhythm, minimal but not without a groove of one kind or another, and harsh synthesizer sound. This time it seems that to me that there is a slight shift towards the use of more harsh synthesizers, while the Pan Sonic inspired minimalism of beats is pushed a bit to the background. It is there, for instance in ‘Inhaling A Black Frog’, but more as cycles of electronic sound and not via the use of a rhythm machine. The synthesizers (and I really couldn’t say if these are modular or perhaps a bunch of machines like a Korg MS20) make the record here and in that sense this seems to me one further radical step down the line, one move further away from what could still be seen as ‘dance music’. With ‘Freigeist’ this is all a bit harder to see that sort of happening. I can imagine that at all full volume force (and you bet I don’t have that home!) you can barely move around but you are pressed against the wall because of use of extreme frequencies. At home that may work a bit differently but the impact is no less forceful, I think. Explosive stuff, play loud. (FdW)”
