Roland Kayn – Tektra

Call it the Holy Grail of electronic drone. Although I’m not sure if that’s entirely respectful.

Roland Kayn’s laws of ‘cybernetics’ prescribe a consequent limitation of the composer’s intervention; the music creates itself. As usual, I don’t understand the underlying theory at all. Maths was never among my favourite subjects.

It doesn’t matter. I liked Tektra right from the start, especially Etoral on the first disk. Years ago I got it @320 from a poster called grasprelease.
What predicate can I give this amazing set? A symphony of solar systems? Nice alliteration. A creation epic? I prefer a darker metaphor – I think it’s the musical equivalent of a black hole, that ominous astronomical entity that swallows all. Now, I don’t mean that disrespectfully in any way. For a composer to have such an impact on a person’s imagination – well, that’s quite something.
It’s certainly a massive, dense sound enveloping the listener here. For that reason, I wanted to have it in lossless. In a sense, Tektra is already compressed enough to suffer an existence as an mp3.

So I borrowed the set from the library. The albums were there alright, which is more than I can say about the frontcover; somebody must have done irreparable damage to it. The library gave the set to me in four barely dressed slimcases, so to say.
I found the front elsewhere. Fortunately, the booklet was in one piece.

Tracks

Cd1
1. Tanar 1
2. Tanar 2
3. Etoral

Cd2
1. Khyra 1
2. Khyra 2
3. Khyra 3

Cd3
1. Tarego 1
2. Tarego 2
3. Tarego 3
4. Rhenit

Cd4
1. Amarum 1
2. Amarum 2 - 1
3. Amarum 2 - 2

The music was realised at the Institute of Sonology, Utrecht, The Netherlands