köln's kompakt records have gamboled into a purple patch with this "popambient" conceit, cashing in on the critical success and relative visibility of wolfgang voigt's gas project on mille plateaux. the popambient sound's definitive statement is still voigt's own pop, recorded as gas, but kompakt stalwarts reinhardt voigt, dettinger, ulf lohmann and now markus guentner have all pushed with varying success the label into more eno-esque territories.
guentner's in moll may be the best executed, most realized of this new lot. some of the untitled (per kompakt tradition) tracks are evocative of global communication at their sprawling, lush best - the pads FXd until they're mammoth, shimmering oscillations, almost overwhelming the melodic filagrees and heartbeats pulsing from the song's core. while in moll often feels alternately like it will float away insubstantially or sink leadenly, it miraculously does neither. each song is a journey of discovery, folding and unfolding until you're seemingly lost in the recursions, but have faith, for guentner is always in control of the magic bus. it's difficult, even if it's a reviewer's responsibility, to come up with a novel way to describe a music that hasn't evolved conceptually in ten years. this is, after all, just ambient techno, a sound that was played out in 1995, yet kompakt have reclaimed the chillout room and made it sound more vital than ever, forging a new identity that is as singular and recognizable as berlin's chain reaction. keep an eye on our friends in cologne, their output suggests a music of possibilities.
bitchin' cover, too, courtesy of label boss wolfgang v.
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