Canopying the whole sky, the cloud-watcher on the ground might spy unexpected shapes in the textured dub haze of Altostratus Translucidus: Bach practicing scales on his harpsichord, boxcars passing across the prairie, the tone arm of a record player jerking back with each revolution.
The silicon dub techno entities identified as Quantec and Monoaxial are based on the carbon life form Sven Schienhammer, based in Berlin. Although shared DNA is readily apparent, Quantec and Monoaxial, both extremely accomplished projects, judder and quiver more, while Scheinhammer’s debut long-player assays a misty, porous minimalism.
Named after the meteorological term for opaque, layered cloud cover, this is very sheer music indeed, with the beat more often implied than actually struck. Not only can light pass through it, but the cloud absorbs more than just condensation rising from the earth below. It pulls in waves of electric static, snatches of conversation, a striding piano. A piece broken off a guitar riff evolves into a proper dub reggae moment, if only for a moment. A woman’s voice repeats, “Going, going” without ever getting gone, which makes the title “Future Life” quite witty. If you really let your imagination take you there, “Being Immersed in Another World” feels like an afternoon at a beach-side Californian bar.
Canopying the whole sky, the cloud-watcher on the ground might spy unexpected shapes in the textured dub haze of Altostratus Translucidus: Bach practicing scales on his harpsichord, boxcars passing across the prairie, the tone arm of a record player jerking back with each revolution. For an album with such a consistent grasp of its premise, Scheimhammer’s first full-length contains a remarkable degree of variation, from the airiest ambient to the most basic dumb disco snare and hi-hat. The colours with which he daubs his expansive canvas prod the listener’s imagination in all kinds of directions.
Altostratus Translucidus is available on Bine Music. Buy at Amazon, iTunes, Juno or Boomkat.
