In Zen Buddhism, a koan is a riddle with no answer meant to puzzle the brain into letting go of logic and seek something closer to enlightenment. Portland quartet Møtrik aims for a similar goal with “Koan." But in their hands, the path to nirvana is only visible after giving oneself over to the delicious whirl of their bounding rhythms and intoxicating modular synth drones.
Leave it to Møtrik, Portland’s beloved collective of Krautrock obsessives and psychedelic wanderers, to turn Devo’s stone cold classic “Girl U Want” from a herky-jerky anthem of animalistic sexual longing into a motorik thrashing that plays like the soundtrack to an AI bot coming to slowly understand human emotion while its circuits whir and glow lasciviously. It’s the kind of sonic transformation only a Mothersbaugh could love.
