Artwork Cosmic Transmission
Cosmic Transmission – a piece made in my hometown Munich by the two brothers Dario and Marco, founders of the techno label Ilian Tape in 2007. I discovered them a few years ago browsing through the records in my hometown store Optimal Records. After listening to their first LP in 2015 Immersion, numerous EPs, great live performances and broadcasted sets, they finally released a new phenomenal and diverse record in October 2020.
Listening to Cosmic Transmission, The Zenker Brothers lead you through a broad variation of genres. The beginning opens up slowly with its ambient track ‚When Nothing Is Safe‘ priming you to the following 10 tracks: raw sounds alternating between influences of Techno, Deep Electronic and Dub, underlaid with its sound aesthetic of 90’s Hip-Hop, which they consider as their primary influence. According to them, they are more inspired from old-school Hip-Hop rather than modern techno sound – they integrate ’90s boom bap Sound‘ because of its timelessness and its futuristic and pure sound effects – “Boom bap” was prominent in the East Coast during the mid-1980s to the early 1990s characterised by a main drum loop that uses a hard-hitting, acoustic bass drum sample on the downbeats and a snappy acoustic snare drum sample on the upbeats.
Its futuristic character renders every single track uniquely fascinating. While listening you get the time to dive into each sound formation and beat pattern, which is necessary as they are so cleverly built up and show no repetition. I always emphasise to listen to the whole album, as for me it is the only way to get an idea of the concept of a particular record. However, for a first glance, I highly recommend the following tracks, which mirror the Zenker Brothers distinct sound:
Sphere Force, as the name already indicates, comes along with a spacey association accented with sci-fi computer sounds. Its spaciness gets carried along into the following track Divided Society, however with much more aggressiveness generated through faster drums and industrial, metallic sounds. Combing the sound to its name, the Zenker Brothers transform this feeling of division extremely well. The track transports anxiety, uncertainty und hastiness.
Transforming Well explicitly shows The Zenker Brothers influence of 90’s Hip-Hop beats and has a groovy atmosphere. Perhaps the most impressive track is Let Loose, especially on the emphasis of its incredible sound aesthetic. The track is magnetising and like a powerful force. In my imagination, a picture arises of thousands of molecules, bit by bit all attracted into the same direction.
As well as the opener Transcending closes the record with a light melody supported by unagitated beats, leaving you with the sensation having heard a record with extremely varying turns and surprising association.
The Result of a brotherly bond
As kids the brothers Marco and Dario spend a lot of time together. At first, the elder one Dario started to DJ on his own. A couple of years later Marco came to see him in a club for the first time and they soon wanted to play around on the sound gear together like back when they were kids. It had always been important to them spending a lot of time together, thus it was a natural thing to also start making music together. They describe their way of producing music as a playful ‚procedure‘ with a cheerful atmosphere: laughing and joking together, engaging in a lot of banter, thus a very brotherly and familiar way of working which probably does not feel for them like work in a conventional way, as they still interact similarly as when they were kids. “It’s sort of like hanging out and jamming than really sitting down and finishing a track in three hours.”
They see themselves as real technology nerds but are not theoreticians, meaning they prefer to mess around with a piece of new equipment and finding a way to learn how it works rather than reading the manual.
When it comes to creativity, they first of all obtain their inspiration through all the gear they own since they find this environment incredibly inspiring. Working solemnly with hardware ties them to the function a particular gear provides, however it also ties you down in bringing out everything the machine provides rather than having a software, which allows you to program anything you can possibly think of. This immense range of sound effects software provides, would block their creativity.
Their collaboration does not follow any particular approach. The music emerges out of coincidence and spontaneity, thus sometimes one of the brothers is taking the lead and the other works on the board and the sound itself. To them they just love hanging out in their studio, messing about and see what happens.
Having observed the momentarily state of the techno scene, they experience that the quality and reputation of a techno artist is measured on their social media standing. This public hype will make bookers and clubs pounce on the most popular. The Zenker Brothers consciously dissociate themselves to be a part of that this phenomenon, which does not display any valid realness and quality of a DJ. They see no benefit being associated with that kind of prestige as eventually it is not about the music; It is about making sure the club is packed and to make money. In the case of Zenker Bothers they want to build up their image through their music, not through a social media standing in order to address suitable people and bookers, who care about Zenker Brother’s music.
