
The album art for Sascha Müller’s The AKS Experience gives us a look into the features of the AKS we will never own… *sigh*…
Artist: Sascha Müller
Title: The AKS Experience
Label: Noise-Joy
Cat#: NJMP3-0146
Keywords: Rhythmic Noise, Techno, Electro, Experimental
Reviewer: Alex Spalding
There are two things I’m going to tell you about Sascha Müller… no, scratch that, there are three things I’m going to tell you about Sascha Müller!
The first thing I will tell you is that Sascha Müller makes some really awesome music. His best known alias is probably Pharmacom, though he has many others, and he’s been creating music since 1990. He is one of the oldschool badasses of the early internet free-to-share music community. A living legend, really.
The second thing I will tell you is that, if you ever decide some day to run a net label… there is an exceedingly good chance that Sascha Müller will find you. He will find you with alarming speed, and send you something quite genial like, “Oh, hey. You’re running a net label. Mind if I send you something?”… and you’ll be thinking, “Wow, what a nice guy!” and respond, probably, with “Yes, definitely, I’ll be happy to receive something from you!” Then, a short span of time will pass. After that short span of time has passed, you will receive something from Sascha Müller that you’ll think is really great. It will somehow strangely be a perfect album of sounds that perfectly suit whatever kind of label you’re running but also with a sound that could only be described as Sascha Müller. It will be very Sascha Müllery. There will be Sascha Müller feels all up in that shit. Or it will just be some cool stuff in some fashion, I guess.
The third thing I will tell you… is that the only pic you’re likely to see of Sascha Müller is this:
Which always reminded me of like… an old Front 242 promo shot or something…
The pic looks like something that’s probably been floating around since 1990 itself! Because of this, I thought I would use the special supercomputers at YIKIS HQ to run an advanced aging program that will enable us to see what Sascha Müller actually looks like today… *beep boop boop beep —kkkkrrrrnnggg*
Wow, yikes!!! Anyway, there are other things to tell of tonight! For instance, what is the AKS? This link will tell all… that way, I can get started telling you of the amazing sounds on this small album!
It all begins with ‘Burnin Up My AKS’. It sounds like a distorted percussive modular synth pattern. Deep explosions like an accident in a nuclear fusion reactor come in. The synthesizer sounds so hot it could melt, sears your eyebrows off with it’s oddly syncretic sequence patterns. Eventually, what sound like ultra micro clips of steel percussion begin ringing in our ears. I just love how this music sizzles and distorts, and moves near constantly… every time you think you’ve got it pegged, a knob or switch is being turned or twiddled someplace, changing the whole sound atmosphere. At all times it sounds buzzing and burning!
Great, now we’ve done it! ‘The AKS Dimensions’ have opened up, and now we’re all getting swallowed into a vortex of AKS buzz sequences, sharp atonal frequencies, gritty distortion, the screaming of compact robots. Harsh blasts of white noise whip through the mix like a sandstorm… not that sandstorm, but like… a real one… anyway, the noises are squeaking at me, stabbing my eardrums with the pops of ancient micro modulars. Another wild ride, courtesy of Sascha Müller!
Lastly, we have the equally brilliant ‘AKS Imagination’, setting our imaginations free with it’s rhythmic clicks and pops, small traces of noise. A bass buzz seems to gradually creep into earshot. The bass sequence starts very subtly, building for awhile. It gets a bit distorted, extremely gritty, filthy. Blasts of distorted bass are churned out, like a punch in the ass! For a moment the mix starts to sound very clippy, and the formerly midbass sequence launches itself into the octave stratosphere before descending once again. The tempo itself seems to mutate a little! I hear scraping distorted percussive stabs of tonal noise. Extremely mangled soundscapes now… and it sizzles out, blasts off, becomes an alien signal feed and then a 1970s buzzing lead with echos, leaping around chaotically, dancing in our heads.
Anyway… I just know you’re going to love this album. How sure am I? Sure enough to post a link below! This is especially for those of you who are synth enthusiasts. 😉 And now… the aforementioned link, I hope you enjoy:
https://archive.org/details/SaschaMller-TheAksExperiencenjmp3-0146
oddly, this picture of Sasha resembles Sid Bolton, a well known Canadian computer history guru.
OMg, you’re right, it almost does!
We should ask Sid if he ever listens to Sasha Müler once in a while…. Sid is an Amiga nut from way back, so he actually could be familiar with Sasha, from the golden age of music trackers.
I just got on twitter and tweeted… that doesn’t sound right… I twat him the question. I wonder if he’ll respond?
hahaha that awesome! 😛
lol, I think he deleted it as spam or something though!
Maybe he though you were Sascha himself, spamming the web to get attention for you music. lols! Now you have ruined the reputation of an underground musical god 😛 😛 😛
The SPAM Experience!
Burnin Up My Reputation. 😛
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