September 2022: The essential albums (part 1)

Chris Korda — More Than Four (Chapelle XIV)

"Thou shalt not renounce the four-four time signature." This, or something similar, could be the first commandment on the stone tablets of dance, which, according to the Bible, Moses received on Mount Sinai. Nine more commandments follow, but we'll skip those for now. The head of the Church of Euthanasia, Chris Korda, will surely be delighted to read this (un)biblical reference. His new album, More Than Four, is marked by the heretical attempt to violate this first commandment, but it will ultimately fail in that attempt. Chris Korda's public status on the beat is: "It's complicated," though it's actually quite simple.

In other genres of music, time signature variations are the norm, especially within individual pieces. Here, there is freedom of movement, with the meter serving the music. In techno, however, this is unthinkable; the beat drives the music. Or: "If you can't mix it, it is broke." So it's better to leave everything else alone. Breaking with this approach, sometimes in quite radical ways, is not revolutionary in itself.

Chris Korda cites composers Terry Riley and Steve Reich as references, but this doesn't do him any favors. Listening to More Than Four, the album feels unnecessarily stretched out. The time signature experiment may promise tension, but it only gives the illusion of depth and complexity. The colliding and then diverging time signatures quickly test the the listener's patience. Instead of weaving graceful parables like Reich or Riley, Chris Korda's tinkering feels more like shaky equations from middle school math.

—Andreas Cevatli

The preceding is a translation. The original language is here.