Rechenzentrum. Mmmm. It means 'data processing centre'. And in a funny way, it's not just a tongue-in-cheek reference to these teched-up Berliners' fulsome computer love. These latest signings to the irrepressible Kitty Yo label genuinely function like a processing plant, dragnetting electronica and producing 57 varieties of black-boxed slurry.
It's a noisy process. Starting out with 'Bildschirmschoner''s industrial glitching, Marc Weiser and creepy visualist Lillevaen ladle out extreme V/VM-style screes, minimal Jeff Mills techno, cinematic soundtracks, and what sounds like a very groovy mechanical bull head-butting an electrified fence. Bar the bad singing, it's impressive, if hard work.
It all makes Tarwater's taut, laser-guided melancholy sound like a gambol in the countryside by comparison. In fact, new songs like 'KR?LEG' and 'All Of The Ants Left Paris' come over all sleepy-eyed and pastoral respectively, masking the cutting-edge blades turning within. Older tracks - like 'Otomo', or the as-yet-unsurpassed 'Watersample' - are more obviously bound up in fraying wire and digital duct tape. Here familiarity breeds a little experimentation, as stylophone and extraneous whirrs and crackles take the originals ever further into the sublime. The seahorse documentary winking on a screen behind can only add to the sense of wistful wonder that is Tarwater's gift to the Kitty Yo party.
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