Wrack: Cracked Refraction (2012) Porter

Wrack: Cracked Refraction (2012) Porter

“The onetime Chicagoan started Wrack as a jazz-oriented project, but over time he’s come to focus more and more on jagged themes, unwieldy time signatures, and tricky pinpoint interplay (a la Anthony Braxton), all played with the postpunk energy of his old band Lozenge . . . Drummer Tim Daisy and bassist Anton Hatwich make for a whirlwind rhythm section, and when they buckle down and play hard they sometimes seem to splinter the front line with their momentum as they signal the rapid-fire shifts in Bruckmann’s knotty, episodic compositions.” (Chicago Reader)

LOZENGE: Undone (2005) Sickroom

LOZENGE: Undone (2005) Sickroom

“…a clattery, distorted racket… Cheap organ and synthesizer, clanking percussion, clobbered drums and cranked-up bass work up stop-start patterns that sound like progressive rock locked in a dank boiler room…. Every so often, someone howls a line like “What are we waiting for?” amid the din, or the music switches to a sardonic oom-pah. All the lurching and buzzing is invigorating and hilarious, unless you’re prone to motion sickness.” (John Pareles, New York Times)

EKG: No Sign (2005) Sedimental

EKG: No Sign (2005) Sedimental

“EKG is capable of a langorous lyricism while in other cases this tendency is willfully crushed and ground down into a gritty landscape of fine-grained glass and silt. Open and inviting tones draw the listener in at the same time tenser noisy outbursts work to alienate. Tightly controlled grainy textures splutter to life and dissolve into hovering drones. The sequencing can be jarring, but the effect is of an irregular pendulum’s swing – a fevered and woozy oscillation through tension and release.” (Steve Rybicki, fakejazz.com)

gasps & fissures (2004) 482Music

gasps & fissures (2004) 482Music

“Gasps & Fissures’s microscopic constructions are meticulously built from some of the music’s smallest bits. . . Bruckmann’s classical and jazz influences are stripped down and dissected, resulting in music that’s as much electronic as it is either of the aforementioned styles. . . Like a slide of single-celled organisms bursting to life under a microscope, this album finds flourishing life in the most unexpected of places.” (Adam Strohm, Dusted Magazine)

Grand Mal (2003) barely auditable/Pax recordi...

Grand Mal (2003) barely auditable/Pax recordi...

“…a bright-toned yet challenging suite of snippets, as far from standard improvisation blowouts as it is from patience-draining Austrian angst. Which is to say, no quarter is given the eardrums, yet good humor carries the day… A disc to return to again and again, impressive for its lofty levels of extended virtuosity, but even more for its improvisations-each showing its own beautiful kind of composure.” (Tom Djll, Transbay)

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