Member:
ffroyd
(Profile)
(All Album Reviews by ffroyd)
Date:
3/20/2008
Format:
CD (Album)
This one came at me totally by surprise and just really impressed me. King of Agogik is a solo project of German drummer Hans Jörg Schmitz. I had no idea who he was when I got this sent to me, but I’m really glad to have gotten to know this music. The Aleatorik System disc is very impressive from both an entertaining and technical standpoint. Schmitz is an excellent musician with many years of experience with numerous artists. This is his second release under the King of Agogik name.
One of the first things that I noticed when I looked at the liner notes for this disc was the huge equipment list. Great detail was taken especially with naming all of the percussion instruments. After listening to the music I can see why he put down all of that, he plays the drums like nobody’s business! Not only does Schmitz handle a massive array of drums, he also plays all of the keyboards as well as guitars on a number of tracks. He probably could have done all the instrumentation on this album by himself but he had some help. Lending a hand were Dirk Wilms who plays guitar and bass on 3 tracks, Volker Cornet who plays bass on several tracks and Tobias Hampl who plays 7-string “dreamhouse” guitar on one tune.
The music is mainly symphonic but wanders all over the map, always with mind-blowing drums. Some of the stuff reminds me of bands like Isildur’s Bane and After Crying with very slick and complex orchestration. Individual song styles can range from blistering metal (“Aleatorik Suite”) to atmospheric space rock (“Rody”) to weird avant experimentation (“Termites Trip”) to ambient symphonic (“Quiet Slumber…Until…Mytime.com”) to everywhere in between (just about every track). Most tracks jump from one style to another freely several times within the course of a few minutes. There are a lot of soundtrack elements as well and much of the music has a very picturesque quality.
It could take me several days to describe all the music here. That may be a bad point about this album, there’s just way too must to digest. I’ve yet to be able to listen to the entire album in one sitting. But I will say this much: it has never bored me. Hans Jörg Schmitz is indeed a world-class drummer and songwriter and this music is simply excellent.
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