Track of the week

Track of the Week

A maybe little less known Solar Field track, but by no means any worse!

Krusseldorf - From Soil to Space

1. Geometrics

2. Boxing

3. The Cell

4. First Blood

5. From Soil to Space

6. Click

7. Deep Fulgin

8. Tokyo Nights

9. Soe Doe

10. Deep into the Bowl

11. Choclop

12. Zyclops

13. A head under the Towel

After having reviewed Krusseldorf's second album, 'Bohemian groove', I was certain that this was the pinnacle of Simon Heath's career, he could never release an album that would top it. This was the perfect album, there were no flaws, no bad tracks, no mistakes, everything was meshed into something extraordinary. This album was Simon's fifteen minutes of fame, I told myself, and to be honest, how do you top something perfect? Well you can't really top it but you obviously can do it again! And perfect a second time around, is surely good enough for me.

The first thing you recognize is Krusseldorfs amazing production skills, it's crisp, acidic, snappy and the composition never feels misplaced or unconsidered. The composition is worth mentioning, it's a more daring one. Simon is pushing the boundaries a little bit into a more glitchy and at times crazy approach, reminiscent of 'Smokers lounge', only this time it is executed exceedingly better. What is also apparent is the dark, gloomy touch. 'From soil to space' does not have the same emphasis on melodic content as Bohemian Groove did, which was a very colorful album. The color spectrum on FSTS is towards a more brown and gray one, represented on the cover art. Here the center of gravity is the gloomy atmosphere and the glitchy composition. A good way of describing this sonic gourmet dish is the merging between Simon's other project Atrium Carceri and Krusseldorf.

So there's not a ton of melodies but they do appear from time to time. Although not as to make the music veer away too far from it's gloomy tendency, at most it sounds contemplatively beautiful with an edge of sadness. I think that this was a conscious choice from Simon and a good one at that. This album was never meant to convey something happy or elevating. It adds a mature touch, and it makes me regard Simon more as a great composer than a good downtempo producer.

Music can be art, and very much so on FSTS. Every listen I just sit and “watch” the music, looking at it from different angles, letting it give rise to different notions and conceptions in my mind, there is always some little detail I didn't notice before. I would like to hang it on the wall but this is of course not possible, it's a piece of truly abstract art. It might be true that a picture says more than a thousand words, and I feel inclined to submit to you that a good album says more than words can ever describe. And this is surely the case with 'From soil to space'.

Listen to and/or buy the album at Bandcamp

Lauge & Baba Gnohm - Langbortistan

1. Langbortistan

2. Dybet

3. H2O

4.Refleksioner

5.Nordlys

6. Hypnose

7. Rejsen

How does an album come to be? Is it just parts sewn together, or is there some connection between them? Are tracks evolving from one another in one direction, from the first sound to a full fledged album, just as the universe supposedly sprang from a first instant and then evolved into the reality we can witness today, maybe the big bang was a sound, a sound that signified the starting point of the symphony that we call life. Or can the tracks interact with each other and the sound that was the starting point, are there mutual relations of supportive creation in between them? I'm not an artist, or a music producer, so I wouldn't be the right person to answer these questions. What I do know is that I have the fullest respect for creative individuals but also for creativity and creation in general, since I don't think creativity or creation solely applies to individuals, that is individual human beings, but to countless other things in the universe as well. So of course I had great respect towards Lauge&Baba Gnohm when I had the chance to follow them on a journey, starting from nothing and resulting in their first full length album. I have had the chance to listen to the tracks as they were made and comment on them, if I had any influence over them I cannot say but it was a fun task nonetheless. This also created a sort of personal relation to the album, watching it grow and evolve into it's final stages, resulting in this album being very dear to me before I even assumed the task of reviewing it, and I urge the reader to take this into account, but I will try to curb my enthusiasm while reviewing.

Longbortistan is an album with attitude, I think that after having released two radically different EP's, Daybreak and Monolith, Lauge&Baba Gnohm found an equilibrium in between those two approaches to downtempo, and made it with an initial self confidence that is reflected on this album. Responses to the EP's were good, although many reactions were that the tracks were very similar in character, but somehow still different enough to be entertaining and not repetitive. This is also the case on Långbortistan, it's hard to differentiate the tracks when listening to the album, but it never gets boring or repetitive, how this is done I cannot say but my guess is subtle elements playing a bigger role than my direct awarness can perceive.

The overall pace is slow, hard hitting, groovy and at the same time very psychedelic. There isn't a ton of complexity fused into the tracks, and this has never been a hallmark for Lague&Baba Gnohm, rather the hallmark is the strong emphasis on melodic content. Lauge&Baba Gnohm manages to fuse this cocky bass driven approach with melodic and ethereal elements, resulting in a very unique album. It's an album that brings to mind mysterious and peculiar conceptions, the true domain of psychedelic experience. As far as my experience has showed, artists tend to have this kind of air on earlier albums, fumbling around in a sort of unknown void, then after time the albums become more and more commonplace in character, I think this is a result of an artist sort of moving into a niche, not as to make an album bad or uninteresting, but that initial sense of mystery is diminished. Långbortistan is an album I would place in that early stage of development and brings about this very appealing mysterious characteristic.

The pace combined with an overall cohesive approach to the music makes it easy to depart on a more contemplative journey, so if you are into that kind of stuff this album will suit you very well. This is not space ambient or anything like that, this is highly beat driven melodic stuff, almost every track has it's own distinct melody and these are more often than not greatly executed, a perfect example of this is Hypnose(T7). The melodies are of the simplistic kind that get stuck in your head, in a good way.

Lauge&Baba Gnohm has made a groovy, psychedelic, melodic and mysterious album packed in a modest pace, resulting in a great first full length album. It's the journey that's interesting not the goal and Lauge&Baba Gnohm has just begun their long walk toward their (supposedly) not yet known niche.   


Listen to and/or buy the album at Bandcamp

Der Waldläufer – Completely Near & Far Away

1.Peace (The Calling)

2.Lands End

3.Wake Me

4.Plateau Dedans

5-Perdido Encontrado

6.Caves At Noom

7.Dawning Venus

8.Endless

9.Innerflections

10.Friction Gentle

11.Lunar Sunrise

12.Ciel Ouvert

As you stand and watch the horizon, a beautiful sunset, an airliner passing by in the sky, or looking out your window watching the leaves gently falling from the trees on a dark fresh autumn night, you might have a sense of these objects being far away. And yet all these these objects are in your perception, and your perception is near, it's you, you are in it and it's in you. All these phenomena that you can experience through your perception is in a sense completely near and far away, and this is true. Yet, if you are too look for truth in logic, then this will go against the assumption that any statement is either true or false and that any statement cannot at the same time be true and false. But if it's true that something can be completely near and far away, two opposed notions, then we need to rethink our concept of logic. Because if anyone takes a moment to reflect upon this matter, it will occur to you that this statement is completely logical, consistent and true. What is even more intriguing is that if you reflect upon it further you will realize that it's also false. If you can realize this then you will at the same time realize where truth lies, it lies in that domain of thought and experience that always eludes any classification or categorization, it just bounces back and forth defying any attempt to be controlled.

Der Waldläufers debut album is an album that centers around the emotional spectrum reached after such a realization that I just mentioned, there is nothing else a person can do than completely surrender to life. This implies an album with a slow pace, which it is. What Der Waldläufer manages to create with his music is a sense of vast spaces, a sense of being situated in a large dome of some sort, sometimes with an ethnic touch pushing the boundaries out of the dome on to the wide planes of planet earth. The music has a strong connection with our origins, the nature we live side to side with, this means that the music does not convey an sense of boundlessness, although this notion is of course perfectly imaginable.

The music is permeated with this connection to nature, the stillness, the vast fields of green, lakes stretching for miles and miles. This is music that humbles a man. Even so, this permeation of nature is littered with subtle synthesized sounds making it feel fresh and up-to-date. This occasionally pushes the album into a more space ambient oriented tone. So there you have it, nature and space. But this is not all that is represented on the album, acoustic elements occasionally sets the stage for a sometimes more loungy approach. This makes for quite an ambivalence, bordering between nature and the artificial world we all live in. But this two-edgedness settles into a wonderful emotional state, which is due certainly to the intelligent composition of the music.

Der Waldläufers debut is a slow paced emotional journey, with a strong tendency to depict nature. It's greatly composed in a non-intrusive way. It's a beautiful album well worth checking out, I think most people will be positively surprised.


Listen to and/or buy the album at Bandcamp

Track of the week

Today it  came to my attention that Vibrasphere is no more. But fear not, perhaps this marks a new beginning, Robert Elster from Vibrasphere might be continuing on his other colaboration "Kritical Audio", that would be really wonderful. Just listen and realize why.

Track of the week

To continue on last weeks track from a trance duo, here is "Manzanilla" by progressive trance act "Vibrasphere". A Swedish duo that composes wonderful music both uptempo and downtempo. Vibrasphere really captures the sense of beauty in nature, with rivers, mountains, deep seas and vast fields of green in their tracks. Enjoy!