Topography CD reviewed in Touching Extremes

“Not the first collaboration between Mueller and Kahn, their 2007 tour was based on adapting the sounds of the instruments (percussion, cassette tapes and analog synthesizer) to the various places they touched in those days. An itinerant installation in a way, the sonic perspectives changing from night to night, the physical reaction of both room and occupiers depending on how the performance developed. That said, the CD documenting these evenings is made of five tracks where the variations on a basic theme are reduced to a minimum. The instantly recognizable nervous roar of the snare characterizing many of Mueller’s recent works is always there, its presence felt in proportion to the synthetic corpulence that Kahn brings out together with his customary percussive subtleties, here often overwhelmed by a thick crust of interference and grittiness (tapes are still very useful when one wants to apply layers of blurry lacquer to a composition). There are neither concessions to typical aesthetic levigations nor equivocal winks to easy affordability, this being symbolized by my incapability of decoding the small print in this record prior to finally sitting down - headphones on - and giving full attention to the subplots that each selection presents. That’s right, it took several listens to realize what really happens in the dark corners of this stuff which - if used as wallpaper audio - only amounts to five pieces of burly noise without apparent finesse. The diamonds are to be found in the mud, though, and the hands must get real dirty to retrieve them. Uncompromising material, perfectly coherent with the seriousness of these artists’ incessant research on the disguised aspects of seemingly normal things.” - Massimo Ricci