UMOR REX

Hailing from Cologne, Mikrovolt is the nom de plume of music journalist and radio author Veit König. Recorded sporadically over the last six years, his first release I is the culmination of a hitherto undocumented musical journey. König has always made music for the last two decades, initially starting more pop-oriented before heading into a space disco direction, ultimately arriving at the retro-robotic synthesizer kraut of Mikrovolt’s I. Assembled in his DAW from a host of vintage organ, mellotron, drum machine, and rhythm loop samples, König stays true to this music’s cybertronic roots, locking into epic robotic pulses that sprawl into futuristic jams. König colors the synthetic palette with guitar, harmonica, or other percussion when necessary, but it’s his dab-hand for driving grooves that defines the music here. While the influence of classic German acts like Neu!, Cluster or Kraftwerk is discernible, Mikrovolt’s sprawling minimalist grooves owe just as much to composers Steve Reich and Philip Glass, Italian horror movie soundtracks and the era of techno and electronica in which he grew up.