Hannes Kretzer – ‘O’ Review

What does Hannes Kretzer sound like?

Usually, abstract and experimental electronic music… but this one’s different!

The review of ‘O’ by Hannes Kretzer

I’ve been quite unwell over the last week after returning to work from an operation, and finding it absolutely shattering. I haven’t written a music review for a week because I’d go straight to bed after work (sometimes during it), and during that time I needed something calming and restorative to soothe me. Enter Hannes Kretzer with his latest album ‘O’. I say album, it’s a single 34-minute piece of music, and it is entirely built around a gong.

As Hannes writes, “all sounds arise from a single source: a 40″ Paiste symphonic gong. Recorded, sampled and re-amped through its own body.” At times, the gong is softened to a moonlit hue of itself, sounding closer to a cinematic synth. Elsewhere, it’s the metallic ripples and afterglow of the gongs’ tones that shimmer like wind turbines and rain on a rockface. The piece is rarely atonal. Instead, Hannes bends tones and notes from the gong and then twists them into melodic patterns. Each melody is a tiny vibrational suite to bask in before it is washed away for the next gong movement ushered in.

Water also plays a role in ‘O’. Some of the filter effects warble and bloom frequency shifts like water droplets. Sometimes the metallic shimmers are thunderous, or like a distant waterfall. Where water takes a more artistic and human element is in the tracks’ vibration. The album comes with a beautiful music video where charcoal powder and water vibrate to the bass frequencies of the piece. Those vibrations can be felt inside your own body, too. I listened to this album with a subwoofer on the floor of my living room, and it was like having my own private gong bath. Very hippy and out there, I know, but it was a calming and restorative experience. You can still get some benefits through headphones, too, but if you can, this is the ultimate way to experience this beautiful piece of work.

Hannes Kretzer never shies away from lesser-trodden paths, and ‘O’ is a great example of his artistic excellence. It works fantastically well as an audio-visual piece with the video, and equally well as medicine music you’ll feel in your waters… quite literally!

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