Gerry Franke - Found Myself Or Just I'm Dead

Berlin's Tax Free label first came to our attention last year via their issuing of that mysterious Iris record, Speah, an opening of a door that revealed a deeper history of zoned-out, uncategorisable DIY activity dating back to 2018. Buried in that murky past was one Gerry Franke, who'd already issued two records through Tax Free and now returns with this oddly titled third long player. You might consider Franke a flagship artist of sorts for Tax Free, his music embodying a broad & undefinable palette, an outsider spirit, and an unwavering sense of self. This is the kind of music making that seems to make no concessions to anyone else, the kind you often see popping up on European arthouse labels but rarely anywhere else - think Elko Blijweert, Anadol, Orphan Fairytale, Nina Harker, Goldblum and numerous other single minded thinkers. Of course, as is the remit for such things, Franke is on his own path, employing mechanistic funk guitars, neo-industrial tribal rhythms, and bewitching electronic tricks and flips, sometimes all at once, sometimes in individualised isolated moments. The second half of the record tells a slightly different one to the first, much more rooted in its Berlin location than the first - if side A sounds like a product of bedroom experimentation (not that kind. But possibly, also?), then the B is charged with the bleed of between-room sound of the club, moving between spaces, whacked out on something or other or just your own idle, wandering thoughts. Brilliantly confusing business.