Despite a tiresomely wordy and convoluted press release it transpires that Artridge are duo Robin Pleil and Christoph Mainz who base themselves in a recording studio in Berlin and who are trying to make their music available on a ‘business to business’ basis. Or to put it their way they want to “establish & nurture a close working relationship with visual artists, film and videomakers”, not make music to sell in record shops to artless plebeians like you or me.
The idea of/for ‘Finished Soundtracks for Unshot Films’ is pretty old-hat: Barry Adamson was doing it 15 odd years ago with ‘Moss Side Story’. Where that album was music for one imagined film this works as a sampler CD with each track demonstrating different stylisations rather than an overarching listening experience composed for one visual narrative. Tracks such as ‘Conclusion’, ‘Delos’ and ‘Omsk’ place a heavy emphasis on looped electronic beats and sound-waves whereas synthetic and organic sounds are merged well on ‘Infusion’ and ‘Disposition’, the latter being a desirably effective and affecting piece of music. On the jazzy ‘Mod Rat’ the music discards nearly all artificiality for a ‘real’ orchestrated arrangement.
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There is too much going on for this to be merely ‘ambient instrumental’ and the electroclash of ‘Exile’ soon wakes you rudely from whatever reverie the first half of the album may have instilled: in a rare moment of purposeful clarity from their press release they themselves use the term “contemporary industrial chamber music” which is pretty much on the mark. Artridge just about manage to maintain interest from start to finish by putting enough tone and texture into their music that you don’t actually feel its impact is lost by not having the fictional visual accompaniment.
I hope Artridge do succeed in garnering interest from visual artists as they demonstrate an ability to create a range of pieces that could accompany images that move across the genre-spectrum from the abstract to the actual. Without doubt their sales pitch will be helped by employing a better copywriter.
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