Carl Crack - Black Ark

So here I was googling some Lee Perry info and got sidetracked by this "Black Ark" referral. I never really listened to Atari teenage Riot though thought it was a great band name and I like the concept of digital hardcore. Sounded a little spooky, or something. So after reading up on the late Mr. Crack I tracked this recording down. An impressive collage of found sound, lo-fi aestheticism and demonstrating a sizeable knowledge and respect for the genres he cross-pollinates. To me this feels like a landscape painting or a soundtrack maybe.

Tell me what you think.

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BIO: Carl Crack, born Carl Böhm (1971 in Switzerland – September 6, 2001) was a Berlin-based techno artist best known for his membership in the digital hardcore band Atari Teenage Riot from 1992 through 2000.

Around 1992 Carl was finding little of interest in the then music scene, he thought the Beatnigs, (The original vehicle for social and political critic Michael Franti later of the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy and Spearhead), were one of the few significant bands around. Along with the other members of Atari Teenage Riot he was looking for a new direction. Most other German groups were copying already existing styles and there was little or no originality.

Carl initially had a big influence on ATR’s style, particularly on the first two albums where he developed an MC style which owed less to the U.S. than his own imagination. He also he had his own musical ideas that could not be expressed within the confines of a group.

Carl's only solo release was 1998's “Black Ark”(DHR LTD 005) is, as its name suggests, heavily influenced by dub and in particular Lee Perry. Adding hip-hop to the beats and taking ideas from Japanese noise to create atmosphere, Carl created the sound of the city that owed a debt to John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.” Intending it to be heard as a single piece of music, he paints the coldness, the sense of isolation and depression that can exist even in the most crowded places.

Carl deconstructs the influences of early hip-hop, old school electronic, 808 rhythms and explorations into pure noise and combines it with sampled political statements and his own poetry to create a new experimental musical context which illustrates the tensions he finds in today’s society.

After the heavy touring to promote ATR’s third set, “Sixty Second Wipe Out,” the members of the group commenced work on follow ups to their various solo projects.

Crack appeared on Cobra Killer's 2002 album, The Third Armpit. The Cobra Killer duo of Gina V. DOrio and Annika Trost began as part of Alec Empires Digital Hardcore movement. ...
He also was part of Firewire and Whatever, both with Din-St.

Carl was working on a new record as well as performing with a variety of other artists when he was found dead in his apartment on September 6th 2001. He was 30 years old.

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