MOTRIK – safety copy

The long tail of krautrock in all its droney, repetitive permutations continues to be felt in modern music, some forty plus years after artists like Faust, Kraftwerk, and Can arrived in the world. It’s what one does with these influences that matters, and no one is doing more with the raw materials of this sound than Møtrik. This quartet from Portland, Oregon—bassist/vocalist Erik Goltz, drummer Lee Ritter, guitarist Cord Amato and synth wizard Dave Fulton—connect up with the sounds of the past like an M.C. Escher mural: it follows the same patterns but takes them in much different directions with much more colorful and mind-altering results. Through seven extended jams, on the band’s long-awaited second album Safety Copy, the band nod to their German forebears while applying their expertise in post-rock, garage punk, prog, and more to those well-loved templates. Everything sounds clear and precise, thanks to being recorded DIY style by Jason Powers (Grails, Blue Cranes) in a remote coastal enclave. The album is massive in scale, filling the stereo field with a cinematic grandeur. *Jealous Butcher