Mol Quartetto – Zurufe CD

‘Zurufe’ is the captivating debut of orchestral drone by Mol Quartetto, who count Hans-Joachim Roedelius (Cluster), Christopher Chaplin, CM von Hausswolff, and Tim Story in their gloaming mass, resembling the late stages of The Caretaker project.

Mol Quartetto introduce themselves in the most elusive, spectral terms on their first venture, a sort of hybrid, semi-improvised version of a performance at the Arnulf Rainer museum in Baden, for the MoL festival. The 45 minute piece features original recordings made in situ, where the players were sequestered in separate rooms, using the centuries old bathhouse-turned-museum’s marble clad pools and walkways as a giant acoustic reverb unit for communication between Roedelius’ grand piano, synths and tapes, Chaplin’s orchestral choir samples and synths, von Hausswolff’s Nepalese location recordings and oscillators, and Story’s sound design. However, someone forgot to push record on Chaplin’s line out, and the results were shelved until he re- recorded his parts, which were re-amplified by Story, along with the other parts, back into the museum space, resulting this richly ghostly interplay of resonant impressions and afterimages.

Mixed down from some 30 mic tracks, the final piece evokes the feeling of drifting palatial settings that could just as easily be The Overlook as Marienbad, doubtlessly conjuring a dreamlike, OOBEy sensation and perspective of place and space that deeply stimulates subconscious responses. As we say, The Caretaker’s latter stages are a clear reference point for us, and also Stephan Mathieu’s manipulation of ancient 78s, but it’s the natural acoustic complexity of the resonant reverberations that really sets this one apart, perhaps best compared with something like Howlround’s ‘The Ghosts of Bush’, and serving to smudge each performers parts into an insoluble whole where we can only pick out the most fleeting, glancing impression of Roedelius’ keys, or Chaplin’s orchestral chorales, which are seamlessly subsumed back into the mass by Story.

It’s a sound of incredible, rarified substance and ambiguity, absolutely primed to get lost in and detach oneself from reality for the duration. Seriously, you’ll want to return to its haunted corridors and halls over and again. A proper trip, this.