Central to the Leitmotiv Limbo ethos are Värttö's self-made instruments, built from discarded, repurposed, and found objects, such as loose springs and other metallic implements. Spiritual Disturbance was recorded in 2020 and released privately as a small run of recycled cassettes - this CD version is the first widely available Leitmotiv Limbo release since their 2018 split cassette with RNPno2 on Finnish label Hyster Tapes. Currently based in Port Adelaide, Australia, Leitmotiv Limbo has developed, slowly but surely, over the past few decades, through international travel and relocation, including five years in Estonia (2008-2012), where Värttö set up the Servataguse Muusika concert series. Edition of 300 hand-numbered.ĭe la Catessen Records presents Spiritual Disturbance from Elijah Värttö's project Leitmotiv Limbo. Alive, flickering with incident, Superior State is energy transmitted, coursing through the collective's veins. Indeed, that poetry is echoed back in the beautiful liner notes by Adelaide artist Michael Hocking. Värttö has tapped into the poetry of the programmatic on Superior State, and he's sharp in his grasp of the significant effect that the incremental shifting of a few simple parameters can have on the overarching structures he's building here. It's intensely evocative music, recalling all kinds of phenomena, both man-made and natural: electricity pulsing through wires the humming of the central nervous system the quiet hiss of deserted computer laboratories the pulsations of plant life the molecular vibration of atoms. But also, in the insistence of Värttö's attention to detail, and his careful focus on a delimited number of elements, the twelve pieces on Superior State recall the work of mysterious German outfits Werkbund and Mechthild Von Leutsch, or the solo explorations of artists like Asmus Tietchens, Achim Wollscheid, and Goem. You can hear some trace elements, here, of the minimalist techno-not-techno of artists like Pan Sonic, or Studio 1/Freiland, in their reductionist ethos. For Superior State, Värttö is more intently focused on rhythms and pulses, resulting in a beautifully sculpted collection of poetic vignettes. The project of Adelaide artist Elijah Värttö, Leitmotiv Limbo has, over the past few decades, tracked a history of quietly insistent experimentation, embracing several technologies - invented instruments analog filters drum synth - to sketch desolate, cavernous structures, sometimes performed in reverberant spaces, such as church halls, which gifts the recordings a ritualistic air.
This time, Leitmotiv Limbo's isolationist studies have been bumped to vinyl, which feels like the perfect format for these twelve miniatures. Superior State is the second Leitmotiv Limbo album released by Port Adelaide's De la Catessen Records, after the 2022 CD Spiritual Disturbance.
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