Review Summary: Fetch is a natural culmination of the Trio’s previous efforts, and may be their best recording yet.
Moritz Von Oswald Trio’s third studio album,
Fetch, continues the expansion of the minimal techno group’s improvisational template. Considering the group’s previous releases,
Fetch is more focused than the hazy, drawn-out
Horizontal Structures, and it adds an array of sounds that weren't present on the stripped-down exercise
Vertical Ascent. These inclusions, most notably horns, bass, and the re-emergence of Ripatti’s DIY percussion, add texture and dynamics to these lengthy dub-techno tracks.
Fetch finds the Trio still using the stream-of-consciousness tracking that has served them well in the past. The album leads with its lengthiest excursion, ‘Jam’. The predominant accessory on ‘Jam’ is the improvisational melody of the newly added horn section. The surprise here is not the presence of horns, but the jarring effect as they burst into life. Since improvisation and jazz go hand in hand, it’s a seamless fit into the scheme of what the Trio is doing. The horns add a colorful quality to an album whose general inclination is to explore darker recesses.
Those recesses are predominant on the album’s other tracks, especially, ‘Dark’. As ‘Jam’ mutates into the opening of ‘Dark’, the sounds become less spastic and settle into a deep bass groove. The final horn outbursts in ‘Jam’ create an air of claustrophobia, and the percussion begins to take the form of noises you wouldn't want to hear behind you in an empty house. Once the track slows to a crawl, ‘Dark’ makes its entrance.
Following ‘Dark’ is ‘Club’, which rarely indicates that it would be heard in one, but nevertheless pedals a consistent beat, synthesizer hums, and miscellaneous ‘kitchen sink’ percussion (recorded in what sounds like a long tunnel that echoes into the darkness beyond sight). Although it is not the most sinister or colorful track on Fetch, ‘Club’ picks up the tempo following ‘Dark’ and helps the album forge on into the robotic circus of ‘Yangissa’.
‘Yangissa’ is perhaps the most challenging of the tracks on
Fetch. Nearly half of the runtime is spent at what might be described as a deliberate clatter. The various instruments attempt to re-assert themselves, but they can’t pick up enough steam and the track comes to its conclusion still on the fringe, with a rumbling just beneath the surface.
Fetch is a natural culmination of the Trio’s previous efforts, and may be their best recording yet.
