Mark Bennett wrote:
> Don't care much for what I've heard of this, which I'll admit isn't all
> that much. The Japanese stuff makes my skin crawl.
I'm also not overly fond of that fiddly, precious dot-dash minimalism of most of the Japanese artists. But Toshimaru Nakamura can really be good with collaborators outside of that scene.
I think there's a warmth, almost a humanism to the Berlin artists. I'm not big on electronics; somebody with a set-up like Keith Rowe's, well you can get so many sounds that it almost seems like cheating to me. I much prefer the people who are basically exploring the limits of an acoustic instrument like Doerner, or somebody like Andrea Neumann were the electronics are limited to a means of amplification and focus.
You should check out the two Phosphor discs on Potlatch, at least. Or anything with Burkhard Beins on drums.