Swiss band Sum of R released an album on Utech Records a couple of months ago, and I provided the artwork for the front cover and the insert.

Reto from Sum of R provided me with a few reviews of the CD that mention the artwork itself.

Visit http://www.utechrecords.com to purchase

Visit the band's website at http://www.sumofr.ch for more information, and to see what the insert looks like.

Bad Alchemy

Dec. 2008

The artwork of SUM Of R (Utech Records, URCD025) – a eerie female 
nude, silver on black – corresponds to the breathtaking 
Utech-Standard. In addition to this Vanitas motive “Death and 
Girl” (or “as girl”) Reto Mäder (RM74) composed toghether with Christoph Hess and 
Roger Ziegler (Herpes Ö Deluxe) - based on bass guitar, 
strings, electronics, piano, turntable, harmonium and effects - not a 
morbid, but a creepy dreamscape consisting of gloomy sounds, dismal 
and dark beats and ominous hallucinatory voices.
If you allready know Excursion and other works of RM74 or Havarie (2003) and 
Kielholen (2007) of Herpes Ö Deluxe, you are listening with SUM OF R 
to something completely different. The clock goes crazy, the sounds 
seem to flow forward and backwards at the same time. The sound 
sources merge into one another and silver vibrations create black 
whirls.



’Our Karma is broken' consists of only one four-tone-motive, moving 
around in a circle. Throughout ’Bones Beer and Muscles' lead 
intense ritual drum sounds and lash guitar storms.
At the beginning of ’Eleventh Rib' you should be enough adjusted to 
the light conditions to discover wiry string arpeggios which are run 
through percussive scratches. Guitarlike riffs boom also in ‘Requiem 
for a Liar’ and descend – defined through bass sounds – in 
‘Pack Mule’. Here the feedbacks and rustling sound clouds 
superimpose every single word that is declaimed somewhere in the 
background. ’Unlisted Desasters' drags along like covered up sound 
of flourish of trumpets and ends in the dream trap of ’Basics of 
Sleep' (13:21). This starts with a stagnating blubber which changes 
into an sublime impetus. Dark roaring harmonies alike to rumbling 
tubes and trombones arch about a woven pattern of guitar and muffled 
pulse beat. Here SUM OF R takes the same way as KTL does, especially 
on IV, with its fantastic surges into the grandeur.
Finally ’Good Night Francine' (8:00) is a single tremble, like of 
raging hammered gongs or cymbals, pierced of the dark shine of 
standing waves like the black sun of the imaginary may send out.



The three Swiss complete the dreamscapes of her congenial label 
collegues Dead Air of Final (Justin K. Broadrick), Shivers & Voids of 
The Stargazer’s Assistant (David J. Smith of Guapo and Miasma & The 
Carousel Of Dead Horses), Schwarzhagel of Klangmutationen of Kuala 
Lumpur or Trembled of Nadja as just new Böcklins and Füsslis in a 
time flown through X–rays and gamma rays would be able to, if they 
had not already enough to do as setdesigners for Hollywood gothic 
movies. [ba 61 rbd]

www.NormanRecords.com

Dec 2008

This new Sum of R thing on Utech comes in probably the best designed digipak I've ever handled. I actually can't stop looking at it. I'm a horrible vinyl snob but after opening this I think I might go home, sell all my records and re-buy all my collection on CD.. Basically living my life up until now in reverse. I can't stop looking at it but I really should write something about the music, I'll do my best to avert my gaze.. In common with much of the label's output that I've heard up until now, this self-titled album is gloomy, experimental stuff that I suppose you could tag 'dark ambient' if you really must. There's a fair bit of drone that often crosses over into weird ambient noise sort of territory, with distant slow-motion riffs and lovely controlled feedback. Very dramatic and evocative. Plus the secret goth in you will probably lap up the titles ('Physically Deformed', 'Requiem for a Liar') without ever dreaming of admitting to it. Looking at the inlay I'm assuming this lot are Swiss and the music is a pretty good answer to Orson Welles' cuckoo clock jibe in A Touch of Evil. And look at that thick, untreated card they've used on the packaging.. Yum. Oh, and there's a tit on the cover - WAAHEEEY LADS EH LOL!!!

The Sound Projector

SUM OF R is a side project of RM74, for which he is joined by two members of Herpes Ö DeLuxe – both of these are Swiss noise, drone and electro-acoustic projects which have managed to summon up and portray vast fields of unknowable, metaphysical murk in their slow-moving scapes of sludge. On their eponymous CD (UTECH RECORDS URCD025), Reto Mäder, Roger Ziegler and Christoph Hess use some conventional instrumentation (bass guitar, piano) alongside a turntable, a harmonium and lots of electronic studio effects to create ten substantial episodes of vaguely morbid, doomy and perplexing musics. Well not always doomy maybe, but always strange and compelling. Their ideas about layering and slowly-shifting dynamics could teach a few lessons to many of our American stoner-rock brethren! A fine record whose black digipack and grainy photographs printed with silver ink enhances the flinty atmosphere.
By Ed Pinsent.
directlink: http://www.thesoundprojector.com/2009/01/10/ural-umbo/