in the Video for “Bobby” you can see Simon Popp and Florian König as avatars. At least that’s what the two drummers look like. That means you see them sitting at their instruments as digitally alienated figures. You don’t move there yourself, just the camera, which rotates around you slowly and quickly, zooms in or takes a long shot. And overall you have the feeling of looking at an abstract sculpture rather than two musicians at work. It goes really well with the music. Because what the two Munich guys do as a duo under the name 9ms on their second album, simply titled “II”, has something of sound sculptures. Here things are added and subtracted, here sounds are layered up and down. They are processed and modulated. However, the electronic effects never become an end in themselves.
They also have this kind of sound research in the jazz formation fazer drumming Simon Popp and Florian König, who became known as Cro’s live drummer, among other things, already operated on their debut album “Pleats” last year. On the again with the exciting, young Munich jazz and electronic label squama With the published successor “II” they are now consistently continuing the whole thing. The fact that they actually see themselves more as experimenters than musicians is also shown by the cover, which completely dispenses with any eye-catcher. Instead, the “general information” about which microphones, modular synthesizers, compressors, sensors, pickups, snares, bells, gongs, bongos or shakers were used for the recordings is listed like on a “fact sheet” or “laundry note”.
One word each is enough for the titles with “Lavo”, “Marine”, “Bobby” or “Dohle”. Nothing can be interpreted, nothing psychologized into it. It’s not the individuals that count here, but the rhythms, which, with their borrowings from krautrock, dub, trip-hop or Asian music, nevertheless reveal something about their originators. When a machine of whirling, driving snares, bells or gongs sets in motion, as in “Marine” or “Sarei”, it has something of Indonesian gamelan music. “Mink” is characterized by dark, powerful beats, like stomping out of a shadowy world. The transposed hand drum in the briskly advancing “Dohle” is reminiscent of a stringed instrument.
Even without vocals, guitar or brass, the eight pieces are very varied, but also far beyond hit radio. You should bring a certain amount of time to get used to it. Probably because of their experimental, investigative nature or maybe because the very atmospheric and calm piece “Ada” has something “spacey”, 9ms to “festivals of the futureinvited to the Deutsches Museum. For three days, the focus is on “Ideas and technologies for a better future”. On July 23 at 8:30 p.m., 9ms will be performing together with the light art duo Lichtgestalten free of charge in the streaming dome, the former planetarium.
9ms: II (Squama Records); live on Saturday, July 23, 8:30 p.m., “Festival of the Future”, streaming dome of the Deutsches Museum, Museum Island 1, www.festivalderzukunft.com