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RM74

About Me

Reto Mäder aka RM74 works at the periphery of music and noise with a weakness for disharmonic melodies and psychedelic minimalism. The pieces of Mäder’s studies of aleatoric electro-acoustics includes a broad spectrum of sound sources like piano, organ, guitar, amp, harp, analogue and digital electronics, computer and field recordings.
Reto Mäder has been actively involved as RM74 in electro-acoustic music since 1995. Since 2006 Reto Mäder runs together with Roger Ziegler the music label Hinterzimmer-Records.
*Discography as RM74:
RM74 - Fireproof In 8 Parts (Hinterzimmer Records, 2007)
„The dusty organ winds itself ecstatically in purgatory. The rickety piano holds confused and atonal soliloquies. The detuned strings of the bassguitar gleefully dance to the song of wantonness, and the harp calls for the exorcism of charaded awe!“
RM74/RLW - Pirouetten (Crouton, 2006)
The 8 pieces were developed by juxtaposing crude instrumental raw materials under strict electro-acoustic control. They are songs of songs about loyalty to the grey area between music and noise, Lacan and Freud, stubbornness and penance, grey burgundy and Rolf Benz.
RM74 - Exkursion (dOc, 2005)
RM74 recommends the following days‘ program to the adventurous excursion participants: "In the morning we shall auscultate the bizzare blossoms of sounds created by voracious vermins. During the day we shall snap the twigs of thick trees until our auditory passages snap. And at night we shall roast our hard-discs over the campfire and shall fervently sing of our joy of music.”
RM74 - Instabil (Domizil, 2002)
Sometimes the data-rate violently has its bursts and leads the sound structures into combustion: Then we sit in stormy nights at RM74's warming, glowing disk and sing along with it a small data song from the unstable world.
RM74 - Mikrosport (Domizil, 2000)
In the digital compositions of RM74, a world is generated with granularly sketched pixel- and microsounds that approach unobtrusive to the listener with a working method close to the macroscopic; an imaginary acoustic plan opens up and leads us to warm and cold places in Mäders experience park of little things.
*Discography as SUM OF R:
SUM OF R - s/t (Utech Records, 2008)
The implements: electronics, bass guitar, piano, harmonium and Lenco turntables. The science: deep pulsations, organic drones, melodic feedback accompaniment, vinyl loops, analog sound sources, reversed audio, haunting vocal treatments. The sum: a living, breathing organism that sustains varied levels of function without ever losing its holistic unity.
SUM OF R - EPI (Hinterzimmer Records, 2008)
Just in time for the concert at the LUFF comes a first Sum Of R-item: a 4-Track CD-R called ‚EP I’, packed in a beautiful 7inch-jacket and released as number one of the ‚Hinterzimmer Edition’, an outlet of Hinterzimmer Records for CD-R releases in small runs. The tracks give insight into the various sides of the Sum Of R-universe, from dark ritual drone music to slow, epic doom and beyond. This EP is meant as an appetizer for the debut album on utech records (release in november 2008).
*Selected Discography as OHNE:
OHNE - Ohne1 (Mego/Ohnemego, 2002)
Deft non-linear floral arrangements herald little precog pencil-figures which take your hand, scale walls, crush ice, whisper in your ear and invite you into centrifugal intimacy. Of course these little bullies are fellows too, and deceivers to boot. After offering sweetness they’ll suddenly leap and toss foreskins at you. And such succulent skins too...Deal with it, you bastards!
OHNE - 020503 (The egg and we music, 2002)
Ohne live at Buddha Bar, Minsk, Republic of Belarus. "But this is not y'r typical over the top noise event - it's not an ongoing brutal noise attack. It very much fits the tradition of Schimpfluchgruppe - a strict personal view on both musique concrete, electronica and rock and roll." (FdW)

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 12/1/2006
Band Website: hinterzimmer-records.com
Band Members: Reto Mäder
Sounds Like:

Reviewed by John Bagnall in The Sound Projector Issue 16
RM74 is the European multi-instrumentalist Reto Mäder. He recorded the excellent ‚Fireproof In 8 Parts’ at Bern, using keyboards, guitar and percussion mixed with digital workings. The release is mounted on a card decorated with cheerful medieval visions of the lower depths of Hell, depicting damned souls writhing in various forms of exquisite torment and a fat gloating Satan with a beard. Judging by his chosen title, Mäder presumably anticipates that he will be immune from the scalding blazes of that infernal realm. The eight parts of the main work are striking, to say the least – indescibable bursts of impassioned organ noise, moody piano elegies, and dense sound-adventures that are guaranteed to put your ears, mind and soul through the mincing-machine. With his Latin titles and ironic exclamations like ‚Nothing Is Holy!’, I think this fellow should attempt to make an avantgarde black metal record. Maybe he already has. There’s a bonus CD called ‚Lo-fire’ which is less immediately astonishing than it’s sister, but still packed with disquieting atmospheres of twisted gnarldom. A noire-tinged goodie.

Review by Tom Sekowski in GAZ-ETA
Multi-instrumentalist Redo Mäder continues his quest to confound and delight this particular listener. With each release, his work has become more bold and certainly more mature. His take on electronic music as it sits side by side with "real” instrumentation - organ, piano, harp, gong, guitar - is quite unique. His intent is to mesh electronics with instruments in such a way as to make both sides of the fence talk to one another. To become a true creation, one must first give up a little bit to gain a whole lot. Fourth solo release from Mäder [or RM74] "Fireproof in 8 Parts" is a weird little trip into the world of sinister sounds of strange instrumentation, bizarre choices of musical tyranny and altogether fucked-up sounds. The album begins with "A Stroke of Lightening", where Rev. Lester Knox who praises the "hey man" mentality with all kinds of obscure imagery that is followed up with off-key organ harassed with total intensity. Organ grows in vigour with each passing minute, building up to an ultimate climax that falters off to a subtle sound at the end. On "Unearth”, Mäder builds a wall of gongs, harp and organ sounds that are filtered through his computer and destroyed relentlessly. The sustained guitar soup on "Exaudi!” is barren, scraping and to the point, while Dave Phillips’s piano rumbling and off-key strokes on the closing "Morbus Fidel" sound sinister, total and completely cold. A bonus CD, "LoFire" delivers a somewhat more acoustic side of Mäder. With individual solo piano piece "Night Enfold", there is an impression, he’s continuing on from the previous CD. "E-S-R-E-V-E-R" sounds like a vinyl span backwards while some computer processing is being utilized, while "Scharlach in Saldo" sees the return of the organ in grand glory. Glitched-out around the edges, organ is delivered in grand style, emphasizing a funeral melody. Overall, the sounds Mäder has chosen to record are far from being alien Removed from reality or simply created in the nether regions of hell, the album is a mirror reflection of a dark, hidden soul.

Review by Massimo Ricci in Touching Extremes
I’ve been following, on and off, the moves of Reto Mäder since his "Mikrosport” CD on Domizil several years ago and find that he’s amidst the few ones trying to cut the crap that prevents the huge mass of "new kids on the block” in the glitch/fizz laptop area from becoming individual-styled composers. Mäder is growing with each outing, also thanks to his increasing use of acoustic instruments and found sounds which give his pieces a home-recording quality that’s often lovely. "Fireproof in 8 parts” consists indeed of 2 discs, the second being a "Part 9” that contains additional tracks advancing along the same lines traced by the main opus (and which includes a cameo by Ralf Wehowsky - his partner on a recent Crouton release, "Pirouetten” - who lends his own misshapen sources in the very last minutes). Among the other guests are Roger Ziegler, Alexei Borisov, Dave Phillips. The direction of "Fireproof” is the right one: many of these pieces sound "freshly raw” and only a few ingenuities separate this work from the "excellent” tag. For starters, I’d eliminate most of the (often boring) taped-voice segments, or at least reduce them to the very minimum, rather leaving room to the genuine domestic resonance of Mäder’s simple yet effective elucubrations on piano and guitar bathed in uneasy electronics. This mixture of naively regular utensils, cheap musique concrete and computerized deviations is almost perfect despite some repetitions, and I perceive a general air of sincerity that must be appreciated. This is a good starting point to find the courage to jump right into the ship that sails from Average City to New Greatness.

Review by Frans de Waard in Vital Weekly 568
You could have fooled me: "Fireproof In 8 Parts” is RM74’s fourth solo album - I could have sworn there were more. Maybe I am just confused. Confused with the various releases he made with others, such as the recently released collaboration with Ralf Wehowsky (see Vital Weekly 555). As noted with his previous solo release "Exkursion” (Vital Weekly 490), RM74, nom de plume from Reto Mäder from Switzerland, can no longer be lumped in with the world of microsound. The "campy” sound of that album is also no longer part of the RM74 book. For "Fireproof In 8 Parts” he works along the lines of Ralf Wehowsky: recording acoustic instruments and treating them with analogue and digital means. There is an organ, or a piano, a bassguitar and a harp at hand, and some of these can be recognized, but sometimes, such as in "Part 6: Orchulence II”, not at all. These days the work of RM74 is more in musique concrete territory than in microsound. It’s louder, perhaps even a bit more aggressive than before, but also intense and more varied. Careful working his way through the material is still there, but it works on a totally different level. The carefulness has to do with making the composition into a composition and not a mere random bunch of sound. An even bigger surprise is "Part 9” which comes on a separate bonus CDR. "Concentrating on his lofi inspired songwriter drafts”, it says on the info, and very much so indeed. The music here dwells more on the instruments played, piano, guitar, and lesser to processing the sounds. Seemingly recorded with a simple microphone to pinch that extra lo-fi recording quality. This could be very well a songwriter, less the vocals but on the other hand this could also be the original sounds that were used in the other eight parts. Both CD and CDR are excellent works, from someone who wants to change per release (and that’s something I can applaud).

Review by Andrea Ferraris in Chain D.L.K.
I’ve been waiting for this release for quite a while now, exactly from the days of his solo cd on Domizil and this swiss guy is finally here with a bunch of new tracks. Having been positively impressed by his "instabil” cd (in the meanwhile he’s put out other cds), I was expecting something in the likes, but the first listening have been a bit disorienting: certainly you can recognize it’s Reto Mader in full effect, but forget the intrusive amount of electronics he threw in the potion the last time because this one is more "sober". Mader probably is one of those musicians/artists who consider music as something that’s constantly changing and that’s well reflected in this new "migration", I think his personal touch is still intelligible but "Fireproof in 8 parts” is by some means different. RM74 plays mainly organ and piano but also harp percussions and many other "objects" I guess, while the piano tracks are similar to those you could listen on the Domizil output, the organ suites are more obsessive, minimal and hypnotic. Don’t think he’s left electronics back home given that between the eight parts of this "Fireproof" there’s also a spruce of laptop, but let’s say this work is more heterogeneous. I’m tented to say Mader went for a more introspective release and the simple but really nice layout goes in the same direction, musically it looks like contemporary classic aesthetics and simplicity took over in the approach of this interesting swiss musician. This cd includes a bonus cdr that features some old tracks where you can give a try to the satiesque piano playing of Mader and to some simple electronic works or reworks of music he’s played. I can’t say if this one is better than his previous full-length but I confirm I like RM74, I’ve also read he’s recently recorded something on Crouton (and he had been on Mego) that itself could be considered a guarantee of his high qualities.
Record Label: Hinterzimmer, dOc, Domizil, Crouton
Type of Label: Indie

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