Julius, Rolf – “Lullaby For The Fishes” – [Tochnit Aleph]

Thurston Hunger   2/5/2016   12-inch, A Library

Eerily beautiful instrumentals, originally released in 1985. On
first listen, there’s a mechanical quality, one almost imagines
a Rube Goldberg series of devices set up to then generate the
sounds. There’s not pronounced percussion, but a polyrhythmic
vibe is created in each little loop of soundscape, and how they
don’t necessarily line up perfectly. Like a bunch of buoys
bobbing on the ocean waves. Some other sounds reminded me
of baby humpbacks singing for their dead mother’s descending
in a whale fall, or maybe the “fa love pa” squeak-speak.
Is it a decrepit organ, or a feeble oscillator. The sounds
are short, clipped and a bit mysterious removed from the
installations that originally featured them. The 3 Lullabies
connected to the title are more soft drones, quite short
and more sonic palate cleansers. “Minutenblues” was my
favorite, but “Zwergenmusik” (dwarf music) is towering
in its own minimal method. RIP for Rolf in 2011
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolf_Julius -fur deutsch
-Thurston Hunger