Barbara Morgenstern & Robert Lippok

Barbara Morgenstern and Robert Lippok's beautiful Tesri album has its roots in a 2001 commission for Domino's Series 500 imprint, where they soundtracked the moods of each of the seasons across twenty-one near perfect minutes.

On Tesri, which is an Arab-rooted Turkish word meaning “to accelerate,” the music feels partly coloured by their separate visits to Istanbul.

But this is not kitschy, “eastern-sounding” world music; rather, themusic is exotic and rich, full of seasonal detail, moving fromremote sunsets, insect hum and dust, to a crisp, wintery stillness.

Over the course of the album, Morgenstern and Lippok allow each other space and time to leave their own distinctive imprints and trails, setting up themes and adding to ideas that seamlessly flow into each other. The pair have established an unspoken creative kinship through extensive touring and collaboration, and this aural understanding is apparent on Tesri. Lippok is, of course, more usually at the core of To Rococo Rot, whose morse code repetitions and melodic inventiveness he brings across to this project.

Into this cohesive and intimate sound mesh, other musicians bring their own distinctive styles. Damon Aaron of Telefon Tel Aviv (solo album coming soon on Plug Research) supplies a gorgeous, almost Robert Wyatt-esque vocal on “If the Day Remains Unspoken For,” while London-based Japanese musician, Mieko Shimozo, lends her unique vocals to “Kaitusburu” and “Otuskimi.” Ronald Lippok and Bernd Jestram (To Rococo Rot, Tarwater) also contribute, providing drums on “Winter” and guitar on “Gammelpop”respectively. Jestram also engineered most of the project.

Recorded in Berlin between 2002 and 2004, Tesri features piano, guitar, micromodular, flute, drums, software synths, and computer. It has a certain sound we associate with these musicians, both in their own solo work and in group projects, but this album is no copycat. Tesri is its own dot on the map, its own light lighting up, and it not only complements these other musics, it is its own magical listen.

-Stephen Pastel