Farewell to a sound perfectionist - On Florian Schneider's passing

It is difficult to write more than the acres of eulogies that have been written on the passing of the co-founder of Kraftwerk, Florian Schneider, at the age of 73.

Thus, one could try a completely different and personal angle instead.

When I first heard Kraftwerk's track Spacelab, I was in my early teens in Ceausescu's communist dictatorship. As there were only a few hours of mostly propaganda-filled TV each day, Saturday evenings were special... There was a 30-minutes-long show called Teleenciclopedia, which was popularising science - and one of its slots was about astronomy and space exploration.

They used a lot of electronic music, which was considered ideologically "safe" and clean, also, the music of the future. For the aesthetic promoted by the propaganda machinery, electronic music was a progressive genre, and usually was significantly less censored than rock, pop, or even classical music was. How ironic it was to have eminently humanist musical creations embraced by the dehumanising totalitarian propaganda, by ideologists who completely misunderstood what the music was about...

So that TV show put me in contact with instrumental electronic music, as they used sections of synthesizers-based tracks... Kraftwerk was one of the electronic legends that made me perk up.

Although their aesthetic was carefully crafted to point to Earth, humans, and, among other things, the dehumanising potential of technology, it was wonderful escapism for me. They could point out what technology could do to human society, but they were not dystopian - quite the opposite really, and often even with subtle humour and irony.

Food rationing, the dangers of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person in the wrong place, the repeated power cuts, endless propaganda in every media, freezing cold class rooms due to heroic savings on heating and electricity were an indescribable opposite to the electronic music sometimes heard on radio and TV.

For me, Kraftwerk was not space music, like Tangerine Dream and some of the 1970s albums by Vangelis were. It was about us, society, and Earth - but it shared a certain sense of melancholy that I liked in the aforementioned electronic legends' music.

It was about another world, whilst rooted in ours. It was about another time, whilst firmly rooted in the era in which the albums were created. Heck, even their album covers for me were phenomenal, as they self-consciously borrowed from the visual language of e.g. Soviet propaganda.

Who can forget the cover of The Man Machine? Many in the "West" didn't realise just how precise and telling the graphic design choices were, from the font to the poses and the colour scheme... We, in the "East", instantly recognised the language from posters all too familiar to us.

To say that Schneider and Kraftwerk were visionaries, well, it would be a much over-used understatement.

They showed me that it is possible to be immensely erudite, technological, compose music about a world of "robots" even, in strict and wide sense, too - but at the same time to be emotional under the surface, and create a truly unique high-tech melancholia. Nobody sounded like Kraftwerk - it was robotic on the surface, but deeply human under the surface.

Also, it was a complete antithesis of the communist propaganda's vision about a technological future. Latter was utterly dehumanised, with complete erosion of individuality... Kraftwerk depicted a downright romantic vision, even when they poked at the darker effects of technology. As robotic as their constructed imagery and performances may have been, the music was about the humans inhabiting the ultra-technological world of the future...

From their light and immensely popular tracks, which smashed up the walls around "laboratory" electronica and blasted it into popular mainstream, to the deeply atmospheric and philosophical compositions like the trailblazing Autobahn or Numbers, the list of era-defining works could go on and on.

Yes, era-defining as much as they were capturing the zeitgeist of respective eras... They even played with our perceptions and interpretations, one key example of double entendre being the track Radioactivity from the album with same title.

Schneider's attention to detail, technical inventiveness, conceptual thinking, and, of course, boundless imagination, has shaped even genres we would never associate with electronic music of any kind.

As he put it, "We have played and been understood in Detroit and in Japan, and that’s the most fascinating thing that could happen. Electronic music is a kind of world music. I think that the Global Village is coming.”

May you be now, for all eternity, in the realm of phenomenally intricate sounds of the Cosmos... Rest in peace...

Across time & space: The Thread by Russell Maliphant and Vangelis

All stills are from the trailer of The Thread

The Sadler's Wells dance production The Thread has set out, with its central concept of the mythological thread, to explore "changing forms of traditional Greek dance" via the choreography of Russell Maliphant and the music composed especially for this production by Vangelis.

Such opus then needed a composer who could seamlessly move between, and even combine, ancient and modern, demolishing any boundaries in our perceptions of what musical elements are supposed to be rooted in what frame of time and space.

If one needed another demonstration of how Vangelis is able to compose music that transcends many historic periods' and geographic areas' musical tradition, then the score for The Thread is certainly one.

Naturally, in the introduction to the video presentation that premiered on 17 April 2020, his soundtracks for Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire got a mention, but here we are in a musical world that is more familiar to those who know his extensive and impossibly multi-faceted discography, which spans a seemingly absurd range of genres and styles.

The video is based on the world premiere, which took place in spring 2019 - and it was streamed, then later made available for one week on the dance company's Youtube channel.

The opening, with its drone, its subdued percussive sounds, and evolving ancient-but-futuristic sounding melodic motifs reminds us of the overture to his El Greco studio album (not the soundtrack of same title).

This, and some other sections of the score, are reaching a level of pure beauty that is often hard to process even without the imagery. A few notes from the by-now characteristic and instantly recognisable harp-like synthesizer sounds Vangelis used in the soundtrack to the epic movie Alexander can conjure a sense of immense serenity, timeless beauty - and the dancers seem to be floating on the sound waves...

The lighting design adds to the superlative choreography by Russell Maliphant: the lights create virtual spaces, sometimes splitting up the dancers into separate scenes, producing ever-changing staging of the movements. During the meditative third section of the score, the lighting design and the camerawork create something that is an audiovisual bliss - its purity and simplicity is mesmerising.

In other sections of the score, Vangelis makes us feel as if Mother Earth is pulsating with some ancient rhythm, menacing at times, animating and life-affirming at other times. If we recall Asma Asmaton from the album Rapsodies, well, those very pulsations seem to be now emerging from some unimaginably deep geological structure buried under the stage... and they reverberate outward, after animating the dancers, with the waves dying off somewhere at the peripheries of our known Universe...

This is what it means to think in sounds, not in genres, not in styles, not in preconceived boundaries of time and space.

Sampled whirls of sounds, ancient woodwinds, organic woodwinds of long gone millennia, and Earth-shattering percussion are all coming together in the ballet's most animated sections. However, after every unleashing of thundering forces, we have a chance to recompose ourselves.

The emotional effect of going from Alexander-like percussive passages to the serenity of achingly beautiful harmonies (which remind us of the unique musical world of the albums Odes and Rapsodies) is similar to a feeling of gently dissolving in some caressing wash of sound waves.

The range of the musical concept is, simply put, phenomenal.

We go from minimalist, completely stripped-down elements to towering sonic constructs, from the sound of some ancient gathering in immemorable times to Byzantine celebrations of life forces to somewhere in the outer realms of the Cosmos.

Is it the sound of an ancient army gathering or just a distant fete in some settlement impossibly far from us in space and time?

Are those drums or are those tectonic plates colliding, volcanic forces throbbing under them?

Is that a synthesizer, a sampled and processed ancient instrument, or an ethnic acoustic instrument that we listen to through some immersive voyage in a time machine?

Are those ancient flutes' sound reaching us through some labyrinth of caves, which managed to hide from us for millennia? Or is that some imaginative use of state of the art electronics?

Does it matter?

Vangelis has always said, and this is why people classifying him as an electronic artist are consistently wrong:  he does not care where the sounds come from. Due to the possibilities of technology, he just happens to utilise many electronic instruments to achieve the sound colours he imagines.

The Thread is, and remains, another perfect example of that ethos...


Credits: Artistic conception from Georgia Iliopoulou; lighting by fellow Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist, the “choreographer of light”, Michael Hulls; costume design by award-winning London-based Greek fashion designer, Mary Katrantzou.

The quarantine waves...

Although one tries to resist the temptation for days and weeks, as the lockdown continues one eventually caves in... and posts a "quarantine playlist" of albums that seem to have originated from some other dimension, or have reached us via some electromagnetic waves emitted in some distant galaxy... or emerged from the habitat of previously not noticed tiny organisms.

Thus, on a personal note, a choice of a few albums that might just take someone else, too into the waves and vibrations of vast or infinitesimally small worlds.

The playlist is perhaps manageable in a single sitting (or, actually, lying...), but it needs a very quiet day with quite a few hours to just... be...

1. Tangerine Dream - Zeit 

Among the early, nowadays we would call it ambiental, albums by the veritable electronic music institution that Tangerine Dream has been since the 1960s, we have this double LP dating back almost fifty years...

The reason why I keep returning to this double album is that it is perhaps the most convincing example of 'space ambient'. What I understand and expect under that over-used label is music that simply seems to exist, without feeling that it is being performed by human beings, that there are instruments of any kinds involved in the process.

Zeit simply exists. It fills every available space in the room, in the house, it flows, it changes, it has currents and undulations. There are no shapes to hold on to, there are no structures to be self-conscious about.

It just is...

Yet, unlike many ambient drone music albums, it is constantly changing below its sometimes static-looking surface.

It is almost as if something, someone has managed to transpose into audible frequency range some radio telescope recording of the various electromagnetic activities spotted in distant galaxies.

2. Vangelis - Soil Festivities

On a quiet day, after a lengthy introduction via the sound waves and undercurrents of Zeit, the Greek grand master's mid-1980s concept album is immersing us into a very different world.

We go from the immense and the eminently "macro" to the delicate "micro" world, albeit latter is a very definitely terrestrial one.

Despite occasional sounds of summer storms and rain, this remains a phenomenal combination of minimalism and ambient music.

The delicate, obstinately repeating tiny motifs develop, constantly evolve, and get embellished by a discourse, sometimes a whole multi-party conversation, of other musical elements.

It could be the musical expression of the life of myriad tiny creatures in a rainforest on Earth, but it could equally be anywhere on some exotic other planet teeming with life. The pace of the musical evolution is hypnotising, the whole album has a dream-like quality whilst it seduces the mind with myriad, infinitesimal or large-scale, changes in the musical textures.

Speaking of textures, it is worth paying attention to just how every single synthesized timbre is chosen from the infinite possibilities of Vangelis's sonic laboratory - and how each timbre blends perfectly into the ever-evolving delicate textures.

Sublime, passionate at time, and precise in its dosing of musical energies... an album that is a very unusual and, to this day, unique interlude in the synth master's astoundingly varied output.

3. Michael Stearns - Encounter

The superlative American maestro of space ambient and world music-infused ambiental music has created something that is a rare example of thematic space music.

However, theme and track titles aside, one scandalous way to listen to this album is to not care about the intended narrative that wants to describe an encounter with an advanced alien civilisation.

We return to the world of Zeit, but here we have sometimes vast and thundering forces unleashed... the walls may wobble and neighbours in the street could wonder whether a UFO is actually in the process of landing somewhere.

There are many trademark elements in the compositional and sound design thinking that went into this Stearns album - characteristics that later we recognise in his masterpieces like the soundtracks to Ron Fricke's spellbinding Baraka or Samsara.

There are textures that shimmer and oscillate in mid-air in the room, there are huge floods of cosmic energies that storm through the room and fly off into the distance, leaving us stunned and mesmerised.

During this sonic voyage, we don't travel to distant galaxies, the Cosmos drops by for a visit...

4. Tangerine Dream - Rubycon

Just after their seminal Phaedra album, this one can leave one wondering whether it is the music of intricate inner or outer spaces.

It is, in its two tracks, a hypnotic voyage into some otherworldly spaces that seem to be at the same time cosmic and microscopic.

Maybe this is quantum music, that the late mastermind Edgar Froese talked about many decades later.

There is structure, there are tightly timed pulsations of impossible to grasp physical forces between particles, there are myriad infinitesimally tiny details and shifts in the forces at work... and there is, at the same time, complete fluidity and a sense of timelessness.

Like Soil Festivities, this seems to deep dive into a microworld - but this is not at the level of tiny living creatures, it is way, way below that.

We are listening to subatomic particles shaping up the vast constructs we see through telescopes...

5. Carbon Based Lifeforms - Twentythree

Unlike their pure ambient drone album VLA, this multi-part album has a rare combination of highly cerebral and emotive space ambient music.

It is a very rare experience, after having gone through many decades' output in aforementioned genre, to find something that is so abstract, so devoid of any tangible shape, but at the same time so emotionally charged.

The subtle melancholy of tracks like Held Together By Gravity is sublime and simply beautiful...

Although the creative duo, as we all know, is capable of thundering beats and trendy psy-trance vibes, too, this album is a phenomenally delicate affair.

Despite some of the track titles, which may be pointing us toward Earthly mysteries, we are in outer space... or, at best, in some caves nobody else has yet discovered.

The music gives us something to hold onto, there are tiny shapes we can see in the gaseous clouds, but it gives enough space for imagination to wonder. We can imagine whatever we want, especially if we do not look at the track titles.

6. John Serrie - The Stargazer's Journey

A relatively tiny journey to the American continent can keep us firmly in the sphere of utterly cosmic, but delicately emotive, space ambient.

One of the masters of space electronica from the other side of the Atlantic has this quite exquisite constellation hiding in his discography. It is recent, it is from the new Millennium, but, in a good sense, it sounds like the most stellar 1970s-1980s achievements of space music.

The entire sonic landscape has some intangible gentle melancholy, a sense of one dreaming to be somewhere else in some distant corner of the Cosmos, but at the same time feeling nostalgic about one's own home world.

To sculpt every sound and every transition between what seem to be undulations of gentle clouds of particles, but to make it all feel so fluid, effortless, and without tangible human intervention... well, we are back to the world of Zeit.

If Zeit started us off with the hidden vibrations and currents of indescribable cosmic interactions that exist and will continue to exist independently from us, The Stargazer's Journey is a slow flight among gas nebulae that trigger emotions in us by their, dare we say, otherworldly beauty.

In today's world, where music has been increasingly put into utilitarian pigeonholes (i.e. music meant to relax us, to heal us, to entertain us etc.), we ended up being extremely distant from the Pythagorean ideal of what the 'music of the spheres' is supposed to be.

Serrie's album is a good counterpoint. Yes, it can instantly relax us from it first few seconds, but it is something that defies expectations on what a 'space music' composer sets out to do and why...

S-A-W waves of the past, Ghosts of the present

In somewhat quick succession, certain camps of electronic music afficionados could treat themselves to two new releases with stellar pedigree...

After some solo and group ventures, one of the pivotal ex-members of Tangerine Dream, Johannes Schmoelling has teamed up with Kurt Ader, and Robert Waters under the S-A-W project name.

Their first outing on a full-blown album wears the aptly chosen title Iconic...

Two characteristics can be noticed immediately when listening to the album.

First of all, we are on very cosy and familiar territory in terms of the sub-genre of electronic music we are being treated to. No major surprises, no stylistic shocks, and thankfully no drifting into highly commercial trendy territories. This is competent and confident "Berlin School" electronica, as the first delayed sequencer patterns tells us some seconds into the first track.

Secondly, we might be able to distinguish very specific personal styles (e.g. Schmoelling's chromaticism is instantly recognisable), but this musical collaboration is one that gels very well, so-to-speak. The individual contributions are combining very well, without very firm separation lines running through the music material.

In terms of range, we are treated to quite a lot. From high-spirited sequencer patterns to vintage vocoders to catchy melodic leads to almost improvisation-sounding piano wanderings we have everything here. The album has even a rather dark and atmospheric middle section, when things turn more experimental.

Some of the tracks have the feel of a very successful jam session, with lead motifs hovering above a bed of confidently ticking and spiraling sequencer motifs. Some are so catchy that are venturing almost into the territory of retro synthwave tunes.

With the risk of sounding as if one is expecting some magnanimous musical innovation, instead of a comfortable return to quintessential Berlin School musical language... one aspect of this album is just that: it is a return to something very welcomed but also very familiar.

In many ways, this is a retrospective look at a musical language that is very close to our Tangerine Dreaming hearts & minds, hence one can very much welcome it and enjoy it. However, it really is gazing into the past - and the intention seems clear, with the use of vocoders, certain specific patches, and truly vintage sweeping filtered noise effects and the like.

One can very much hope this is just the first S-A-W album of many, and hopefully this collaboration will have more longevity than Loom had.

Something that is, however, very "now" is the new album by another eminent ex-Tangerine Dream member, Paul Haslinger.

After a number of high-profile or unfortunately overlooked soundtracks, too, one might expect an energetic and possibly high-octane electronic journey. Instead, the album that was born out of almost a decade of piano improvisations brings us something highly contemplative and introspective.

If we experienced delicious nostalgia whilst listening to Iconic, Haslinger's album Exit Ghosts is something from a vastly different musical Universe.

If one takes Ryuichi Sakamoto's astonishingly delicate album async [sic], any of Olafur Arnalds's more piano-centric solo works, or Nils Frahm's piano textures, then one can build an image about that particular Universe.

Exit Ghost is firmly situating itself in that sonic world. Again, no major surprises and no huge leaps into some never before heard experimental directions... However, the rather special beauty of this album is just how subtle and seamless the musical journey is.

We get almost translucent textures like some sonic nebulae, with infinitely delicate tiny motifs. Every piano note has its own life, sometimes we can hear them blending in with the sonic textures, in other moments they hover on their own in mid-air and make us appreciate the delicate process that created them.

Once again would commit here the sacrilege of not going through the album in a track-by-track fashion - as, perhaps even more so than Iconic, Exit Ghost works best as part of a full album listening experience.

There are moments of such delicate sonic sculpting that it makes one think of the most vaporous and subtle moments of Thomas Newman soundtracks, where a single sound can express seeming impossible range of things. There are moments of melodic motifs that will not go away in the mind, and will hover around the room for many hours after the album itself finished playing.

As abstract as it may sound to say this, and even ludicrously "new age" in terminology, but Exit Ghost is like a highly meditative sonic cleansing that will push away all the madness and turmoil of the everyday reality. It does this without being that type of empty musical escapism that we find in myriad "new age" records - and this album comes with a huge degree of artistic honesty.

In our noisy and trend-chasing world, it is quite a fete to be treated to two such albums, both very firmly rooted in their own respective, and vastly different, sonic Universe.

After a journey into a splendid and Iconic past, as different as it is, giving a spin (or a streaming) to the here-and-now expressive minimalism of Exit Ghost is a highly recommended double treat.

Organic chemistry: That Which Prevails, the new album by Computerchemist

Computerchemist's ninth album is a solid island of complex Berlin School-style electronica in an ocean of myriad other mainstream / trendy electronic music releases. Once again, instead of taking some 'fashionable' commercial route, the music is true to its central aesthetic - and delivers on that.

The presence of 'organic' instrumentation in the electronic landscape is (or always should be) a very welcomed artistic choice. If one recalls Klaus Krieger's or Chris Franke's drumming on Tangerine Dream records, Klaus Schulze's drumming on his solo albums, or Manuel Göttsching's guitar improvisations enveloped by Schulze's electronic textures, then one knows what these combinations can deliver as an experience for the listener.

What we have here is much more electrifying than a purely synthesised soundscape. Dave Pearson's guitars and the drumming by Zsolt Galantai (of, among others, Ossian fame) adds a vital organic element to the Berlin School sound unfolding in these tracks.

We have tight sequencers, which are captivatingly pulsating and giving structure to the tracks' lush atmospherics, PPG Wave-like characteristic sonic gems (check out the final track especially), and impossible to resist mellotron-like textures. Everything a Berlin School aficionado could possibly want...

However, in addition we have fluid and, one dares to say, emotive guitar leads, with aforementioned drums on the third track. Even the drum programming on the other tracks feels organic and eminently non-robotic, unlike what happens in some other eminently synthesised, even synthetic, sonic journeys.

It makes the tracks feel more fluid, ever-changing, without static sequencer patterns. Things constantly develop, which is increasingly rare in latter-day Berlin School records & jams inundating the internet.

The opening track is already landing us in catchy Berlin School territory, and characteristically, the sequencers are there to provide structural support to animated electronic rock, rather than totally taking over.

Time Is A Great Healer (parts iii-iv) is another good example where we may believe we are in for a digital trip, as PPG Wave-like sounds open the composition, but then we can quickly take a flight with guitars making a solid appearance...

A Dali-esque Dreamer is a superb homage to Edgar Froese, who passed away five years ago. It once again shows how the tracks do not stand still and there is solid compositional development, whilst keeping an almost improvised feel, too with the guitar leads.

The title track, That Which Prevails is again a perfect example how a retro-sounding organ intro can develop into a fiery electronic rock piece.

Yours truly used to say, even write, about classic TD and Schulze gems that there were no straight lines, only waves and curved surfaces in those records. The same accolade applies to this album, too.

While there is clear compositional thinking with structural development, each track achieves that sense of catchy fluidity that normally only comes with inspired improvisations.

Computerchemist's catalogue can be purchased on CD from CDbaby.com and amazon.com in the US or direct from the artist's site via bandcamp.com. Digital distribution is through bandcamp.com, CDbaby.com, Apple iTunes, Spotify and other popular streaming services.

Wave futures now: the novel Korg Wavestate synthesizer

Korg Wavestate (photo by Korg)

Wave sequencing exploded into public consciousness with the Korg Wavestation at the beginning of the 1990s.

The synth engine's core concept was innovative and powerful enough for this type of synthesis to survive well into the 21st century - not only as software synth re-incarnations, but also as key parts of flagship workstations like the OASYS and Kronos.

There are many reviews and demos out there of the new Wavestate synth, so here one would focus on the specifics of wave sequencing (as there are occasional misunderstandings in various forums or different digital waveform-based synthesis methods are conflated), and would highlight the central idea that truly makes the Wavestate a stunning development in wave sequencing synthesis.

The synthesis method pioneered by the Wavestation is not to be confused with mere memory-stored waveforms-based synthesis, where digital samples are just played back from memory as the oscillator part of the synthesis chain. In this sense, "romplers", as some call these, are very far from wave sequencing. Similarly, the PPG Wave-like revolutionary wavetable synthesis is eminently different, in that case we have snippets (e.g. single-cycle periods) of waveforms stored in adjancent tables of samples, and the synths is sweeping across these tables in a cyclical fashion.

The crux of the wave sequence-based synthesis is that waveforms played back from memory can be, well, sequenced: one can define consecutive time slots during which different digital waveforms' samples are played back. One can have cross-fade between these, again with pre-defined duration - or no cross-fades at all, i.e. the different waveforms abruptly transition from one to another.

Even if, absurdly, one has never heard wave sequenced sounds by 2020, it is perhaps easy to imagine the sonic possibilities.

If one wishes long evolving pads, then one can use in the wave sequences long cross-fade times with atmospheric sounds used as individual "slots" in the wave sequence. The result can be a moving, changing, evolving sound that is eminently different from other synthesis methods' results.

If one wishes to achieve rhythmic sounds with lots of changes and even full-blown grooves, then one can assemble a wave sequence with the desired timings, loops, and no cross-fades at all, for example.

Transitioning rapidly between components of the wave sequence can lead to phenomenal spectral movements, especially if one can alter the individual parts of the wave sequence.

The possibilities are endless... and Wavestation has rightly become one of the most unique-sounding and characteristic synths of recent decades, with instantly recognisable sounds.

In OASYS and in the Kronos HD-1 engine one could have the joy of finding the full wave sequencing capabilites of the mighty Wavestation, with some extra features added in - including user interface aspects, whereby managing wave sequences has become sublime via large touch screens.

Then comes the Wavestate...

If one has heard and/or grasped the essence and the possibilities of wave sequencing synthesis, then one can perhaps imagine what happens when KORG decides to add individual real-time control to all key parameters of wave sequences, structures them into multiple so-called lanes - and even adds randomisation capabilities.

Not only one has now real-time control via knobs in order to on-the-fly alter the wave sequences' component parts, but there are deep modulation possibilities for these parameters.

Well, with the many examples provided on SoundCloud, one doesn't have to merely imagine the resulting sonic power.

Thus, Wave Sequencing 2.0 is not an overstatement.

The cherry, well, a whole orchard on the cake is that Wavestate has numerous classic and digitally modeled filters (incl. those from the legendary MS-20 and Polysix), up to 14 simultaneous effects (incl. the perhaps most realistic and astonishing reverb, the O-Verb available on Oasys and the later Kronos), and even vector synthesis (via a joystick that we have seen on previous flagship models).

Latter allows real-time control between 4 layers of sounds, and the movements of the joystick can be captured and reproduced as part of the synth patch.

There are gigabytes of on-board waveforms, including the full Wavestation offering... so user can spend quasi-infinite amounts of time creating wave sequence Universes...

Photo: Korg

From vintage to new territories: Peter Baumann and Paul Haslinger's Neuland Project

It is fair to say that a collaboration album from two musicians like Peter Baumann and Paul Haslinger is no ordinary event in the timeline of electronic music history. In latter history, both names occupy a significant section with not just their time spent as members of the veritable institution that was and is Tangerine Dream, but also with their solo careers.

First of all, one must stress: this is not an album that rides some fashionable wave of mainstream electronica. Also, whilst it does have some not quite veiled references to musical elements one first heard in Tangerine Dream compositions, Neuland is not a recreation of some period from that band's history.

Something that may instantly captivate the listener, right from the first track, is the very evident pedigree of the two musicians. Whilst both had notable solo careers, the immediately recognisable Tangerine Dream DNA is very much present in the opening track's sequencer work.

The sequenced background and vintage-sounding lead propels us back to the mid-to-late 1970s TD sound. Thus, the opening track (Cascade 39) is in many ways pointing to a fondly remembered past rather than futuristic soundscapes.

Things change several times as the album progresses - already the second track, Road To Danakil, shows that darker atmospherics and thundering electronics are not at all alien to the two composers. In a way, one might recognise a certain gravitas in the arrangements and sonic choices, familiar to those who have heard the Machines Of Desire recent solo album by Peter Baumann.

One could always play the game of trying to guess which musician was responsible for which parts of the compositions one hears, and in this collaboration album, too it could be a rewarding game.

Clearly, there are solid sonic fingerprints from Baumann, the playful melodic motifs that punctuate the electronic soundscapes are unmistakably his - and make one think of his solo albums of yesteryear. Such motifs turn up in many places, from the aforementioned Road To Danakil to Dream 9 to Counting On Time (where not only the melodic pattern, but also the digital choir-like choice of synth patch is a direct pointer to e.g. Machines Of Desire).

The way in which Baumann & Haslinger can build effortless-sounding, fluid, and constantly evolving sonic ambiences is very apparent in the mentioned Counting On Time, and Long Now Icarus or Measure 3.

Something that starts as an almost ambient track can evolve into a playful, than animated track like 54_NOVO, with catchy melodic patterns, too.

The final track, Longing In Motion, is another example of something that evolves from the ambiences of vast cosmic spaces to a pulsating, then rather majestic, piece of electronic dreamscape. The forces that were unleashed in tracks like Dream 9 are held back here and gradually, subtly added to the discourse, with gentle pulsating patterns that make us feel firmly rooted in a Berlin School-style electronic Universe.

When it comes to the overall sound world of the album, a couple of aspects are worthy of highlighting.

First of all, it has a quite minimalist feel, in the sense that the sparseness of the arrangements might really stand out to some listeners.

This is not electronica with vast layers of sounds, everything is kept very distinctive and one really can very often count on one hand how many simultaneous elements are at play in the arrangements.

This creates an aesthetic where every detail stands out, as the very translucent and sparse arrangements do not want to, and cannot, mask or blur anything. The listener is not drowned in electronic showing-off of might, instead, one is allowed to contemplate often isolated sparse shimmers and specks of light in vast cosmic darkness.

One example is M-Tron Field, where often just one synth patch with just a few well-isolated distinct notes hover above a background pad (or not even that, just silence and vast reverberations). Every individual sound is allowed to take shape and float around, if it so wishes to, without being drowned in huge electronic orchestrations.

The other, more technical, aspect is the choices made for the depiction of rather astral spaces. Yes, there are some delays and phasing, however most often the task of suggesting vast sonic spaces goes to immense reverbs. Both percussive and melodic synth sounds can feel as they occupy a space only inhabited by some vast galaxies... and with such acoustic backdrop, the vintage leads (like the fiery solo in Measure 3) stand out even more and grab one's attention.

For an even more general and overall remark, there is an element of Neuland that is highly commendable even if someone's tastes or preconceptions might not actually match what one hears on this album.

Peter Baumann and Paul Haslinger, in a stellar collaboration like this and with the very special pedigree they have, could have chosen to produce a trendy, even perhaps safe, mainstream electronica album.

They haven't - and it is a positive.

It is an honest album, that is consistent with their individual styles and compositional preferences, as proven also by the recognisable musical and technological choices they made for this album.

In today's EM landscape it is refreshing to hear such individualist approach and risk taking instead of some drive to fit a successful-sounding pre-existing mould.