Curators Scott Monteith (Deadbeat) and Gregor Asch (DJ Olive) reconnect the once-great Berlin-New York underground pipeline.
The third double volume in the Air Texture series of exceptional ambient makes an unexpected but totally logical u-turn, back toward the avantgarde roots of the genre. Curators Scott Monteith (Deadbeat) and Gregor Asch (DJ Olive) reconnect the once-great Berlin-New York underground pipeline.
Deadbeat, a Montrealer residing in Berlin, selects from contemporary colleagues in the rebooted capital of German experimental electronica, including Thomas Fehlmann (The Orb), Ricardo Villalobos & Max Lodenbauer, Pole, Tom Thiel and himself. SHRUBNN! and Loops of Your Heart immediately capture the languid, spacey warm goo that distinguished early cosmic music, the latter with a certain Lutheran stateliness.The lovely short tune “Open Your Eyes” offers a more lighthearted, trip-hop terpsichory, while Villalobos & Lodenbauer offer a meandering piano trio jazz hybrid, with a live, loose cable subbing for the double bass. A little further along, Fehlmann’s “Embrace” is a wonderfully wonky cha-cha, whose spirit conga-lines directly into the scratchy skank of Pole’s “Wipfeldub.” Lodenbauer’s duo NSI briefly reiterates a more abstract dub before Exercise One and Thiel crack the louvers to let in more air and light. While he opened the set subtly but upliftingly, Deadbeat rattles some spooky chains to close it.
Asch begins with some advanced campanology by Phill Niblock, recorded inside a Ghent belfrey in 1985, though through the haze he produces they seem miles away. Following twistier tones by Ikue Mori and Pauline Oliveros’ accordion lowing on “Cows, Cows, Cows!,” Jim O’Rourke bubbles in, Fennesz glides in on an electrostatic magic carpet after him and Marina Rosenfeld and Oren Armbachi are each so misty as to commingle.
Eyvind Kang starts on a lovely, low note and keeps it warm for over ten minutes before newcomer Andris Brazus breathes a long, analogue chill upon which Raz Mesinai can “Go Figure Skating”—it sounds like Christmas at Rockefeller Center, but gloriously alone. Each piece is very quiet, and very tactile, like the facade of an old Manhattan skyscraper. Asch deeds the last three tracks to all three members of We™, Asch’s seminal illbient trio. In a radical departure from the band’s congested, urban beat trafficking, Lloop and DJ Olive gaze fondly back at predecessors Niblock, Oliveros and the rest through a foggy glass, while Once11 appends an unfettered, alkalide Latin dance.
Air Texture is just a brilliant series. They’ve even commisioned a terrific trailer video, which, a little oddly, contains excerpts from a track not included on the physical edition but rather as a digital bonus track, by We™ side-project Multipolyomni.
Air Texture Volume III is available on Air Texture.
