Marc Richter, dronemeister of the Black Forest and übercurator of much that is ambient, dark, and tape-loopy on his Dekorder label, isn’t exactly a pop type of guy. The German noisenik’s solo albums as Black To Comm--a name copped from the MC5--have suggested what would have happened had that band really kicked out the jams, motherfuckers, and dispensed not just with verse-chorus-verse songwriting, but with their instruments, their whole sound, and indeed their careers. Black To Comm is the sound of punk dropping out, moving to the forest and learning how to gather field recordings and conduct tape-splicing experiments. Like the Unabomber, but with less mass killing.Something is afoot with new Black To Comm album Alphabet 1968, however. From the dissonant horn climax of ‘Forst’ to the melodic hallucinations of ‘Traum GmbH,’ tracks carry momentum and develop with dramatic purpose; damaged melodies emerge from a fog of folk-drone and float their way into your brain. Wobbly pianos and homemade “kitchen gamelan” (which literally includes the sink, from what I can hear) clatter, plonk and twinkle appealingly, like snow falling in an enchanted wood. It’s almost catchy. The work here--not just of Richter, but of pianist and sometime murmuring vocalist Jonna Karanka--is arresting, accessible even, and quite easy to like. Has civilization seduced Black To Comm? Is the freedom of the freaky forest subtly succumbing to the agreeable, if regimented, pleasures of the pop city?I wouldn’t be too sure. Thoughts of rapprochement between town and country go out the window when we hit “Houdini Rites’ and all hell breaks loose with that kitchen gamelan--like an alarm sounding to summon the native villagers. At this rather late point in the record you start to feel like you’ve been lured into a trap, like Sergeant Howie in The Wicker Man. Menacing penultimate track ‘Void’ appears to confirm the worst. ‘Hotel Freund’, the stunning closer, starts in a similarly dark vein, blaring and brooding. But then something really strange happens: The song””and more than any other Black To Comm track, it feels like a “song”--positively flowers with bursts of strings. Chimes sweep in, offering both hope and mystery. A kind of warmth returns; destruction and creation are held in a tenuous balance. It is a spine-tingling conclusion for Richter, for whom this fragile, tense coexistence feels like the way forward.

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