Review | By Richard Allen / a closer listen
Pressure | Markus Mehr
It’s been five years since we’ve seen an album in a concrete box, the last being MYMK’s The Memory Fog. But while that one had to be broken to access the tape within, this one can be opened to find the USB stick. Pressure also joins the ranks of famous recordings using that name, the most notorious being Queen & David Bowie’s “Under Pressure,” Billy Joel’s “Pressure” and Jessica Darrow’s “Surface Pressure.” Yet while those recordings deal with the effects of pressure on the human brain, Markus Mehr has something more literal in mind: the pressure on natural resources used to create cement, including the over-mining of sand. The process uses an inordinate amount of water and energy, while the material takes a toll on the soil and can produce cracks and fissures. […]