- In the last few years, Neues Deutschland Studio, a small, cluttered room tucked away in an office complex in Friedrichshain, has become a minor hub of Berlin's music scene. SUED co-founder SVN has rented this space for years, hosting countless jam sessions with like-minded—that is, leftfield—producers, from close friends (Dynamo Dreesen, DJ Fett Burger) to out-of-towners like A Made Up Sound. Lately he's been at it with Henrik Jonsson, AKA Porn Sword Tobacco, with whom he's previously released music on Acido Records and Kontra-Musik. On their latest collaboration, Recordings 1 - 4, the two artists click better than ever.
Like much of the music emanating from Neues Deutschland, Recordings 1 - 4 is impressively bare-bones: the label is called Recording, the sleeve design imitates tape reel packaging, and the tracks are simply called "Recording 1," Recording 2" and so on (even more utilitarian than SVN's usual go-to, "Untitled"). The music follows suit, both in its austerity and charm. Each track is a taut rhythm played on brittle drums, with swarms of psychedelic sounds placed low in the mix—whispers, whooshes, birdlike chirps and so on. The beats are hypnotically minimalist, but not without a bit of oomph—by SVN's standards, "Recording 2" and "Recording 4" are club bangers. The atmosphere is vaguely tropical (as it often is with these two), except on "Recording 4," which trades the woody sound palette for something colder and more metallic. Little tweaks and one-off flourishes remind you these tracks are played live. Hardly anything major happens in them, but each one always ends too soon.
TracklistA Recording 1
B Recording 2
C Recording 3
D Recording 4