Moderat - A Gestalt therapy in music

If in today's electronic music world we had to pick one name to describe the current generation of the average young listener, the choice would inevitably fall on Moderat, the abstract machine born from the symbiosis of the Berlin duo Modeselektor, made up of Sebastian Szary (born '75) and Gernot Bronsert ('78), together with their Saxon peer Apparat, aka Sasha Ring.

Right at the end of 1970, when the trio was officially born, Kraftwerk were formally introducing pop music into the age of machines, with that robotic aesthetic that would go on to dominate the years of new wave.

It's almost as if history keeps cyclically repeating itself. Let's remember that many of the musicians from the kraut scene, such as Roedelius, Klaus Schulze, Froese, Michael Rother, grew up precisely in a social fabric deeply torn apart by the loss of the Second World War, whose ending was a kind of year zero for the German nation. Managing to live with the guilt of the Holocaust while at the same time restoring order to a country annihilated by the effects of Nazi arrogance was an arduous undertaking. It took a decade, maybe two, for a genuine cultural rebirth.

In the 60s, the kosmische season was right at the height of this rebirth, and the Zodiak club, founded in late-decade West Berlin by Conrad Schnitzler and Hans Joachim Roedelius, was to Berlin what Andy Warhol's Factory was to New York.

To better understand just how much cultural weight electronic music has carried in the history of contemporary Germany, one need only watch the 2009 documentary “Krautrock – The Rebirth of Germany” and take a look at the dedicated page on our site. Without taking these roots into account, it would in fact be impossible to pinpoint why Berlin became, in the new millennium, the leading active hub for the IDM scene and its various offshoots into house and techno.

 

Raised in pretzel e krapfen in the suburbs of the capital, just a few miles east of the wall that would still divide Germany for another decade (to be precise, near Rüdersdorf/Woltersdorf), the core of Modeselektor took shape very early on. Bronsert and Szary discovered the highs and alterations of music early through rave parties; and it was at one of these parties that Szary, who was already performing as dj, met Gernot. The two immediately hit it off and decided to start doing a back to back at the parties to come, under the name Fundamental Knowledge. It's 1992, three years after the fall of the Wall. Putting things in context from the late '80s onward, the teenage unease the two experienced in a divided, impoverished East Germany led them to embrace and explore the joys and pains of raveculture, which was taking hold especially in England during the same period through the movement that would later become Spiral Tribe, out of which thelabel Network 23, alongside the music of Autechre by Sean Booth and Robert Brown, and that of Richard David James, known as Aphex Twin, who in those very years is gestating his “Selected Ambient Works“.

Still underage, they begin their activity on the decks, and after a few years of apprenticeship discover their favorite gadget, an old Roland RE-201, commonly known among electronic music aficionados as the Space Echo, a magnetic tape audio unit equipped with echo and reverb, with which the two, already adept at turntables and mixers, start having fun.

The knob used to control the sound output on tape bears the very name Mode selector, so in 1996, in a Berlin now reunified and more cohesive, stretching from Friedrichstraße into the sharp architectural modernity of Potsdamer Platz, the two decide to call themselves precisely Modeselektor.

 

They spend the first two years under the new alias continuing to pay their dues in a Berlin undergoing a renaissance, where the remains of the Wall have by now become the canvas of the Berlin Neue Wilden, and the streets bordering the Tiergarten host the Love Parade every year, a circuit from which characters like Sven Väth, Dj Hell and Dr. Motte are emerging, soon to become veterans of Nineties clubbing.

And in 1998, right in the thick of the Berlin scene's ferment, another artistic partnership is born, that between Krsn Brasko and Codec Völker, in the project Pfadfinderei, a studio located near Hackescher Markt, which by then had become a lively cultural hub of the capital's nightlife, as well as a crucial transport junction. Through the studio, initially active mostly in graphics and video art, pass designers, typographers, and indeed DJs and musicians active in the capital, among them Modeselektor, who start taking part in Codec's nights, as he publishes flyers and artwork for events at Berlin's leading clubs. Pfadfinderei soon turns into a fully fledged collective, and the nights organized by the commune take the name Labland, becoming a reference point for artists of every background.

The format of the nights is more that of a free-form experiment than a club night, but at the dawn of the new millennium, it was inevitable that this spirit of rebellion would grow through the expressive freedom of dance, and it's here that Bronsert and Szary begin to find a more solid and dynamic footing. The collective will go on to accompany all the future artistic production and the concept visual side of the Moderat brand, creating a relationship of mutual trust that still continues today.

Also within Labland, DJs from BPitch Control start circulating as well, a fledgling record label born out of Ellen Fraatz's experience on the dancefloors of the '90s, better known as Ellen Allien, who, besides bringing Modeselektor to wider attention beyond the German metropolis, will also bring to light another story, that of Paul Kalkbrenner, who would later become widely known in 2008 through the film directed by Hannes Stöhr, “Berlin Calling”, and who would release the film's music for Ellen Allien's label together with Sasha Funke. We thus find ourselves in a musical dimension increasingly taking on the shape of a movement, involving not just electronic music but every artistic expression, cinema included.

Another leading figure of the movement is the then twenty-year-old from Quedlinburg, Sascha Ring, who moves to the capital for better fortune in the mid-90s, finding exactly the intellectual drive he needs. With T.Raumschmiere, disc jockey of the circuit obsessed with the synths of coldwave and punk, he founds Shitkatapult Records in 1998. He starts out as a percussionist, in fact contributing to Ellen Allien's successful second album, “Berlinette”, but he soon realizes that his range as a musician extends beyond the drums, and even beyond the Bpm of the techno his colleague habitually plays at these nights.

Multifunktionsebene, the first record released by Ring in 2001, already carries in its electro-dub pulses an early taste of what we would later see with Moderat, albeit in a naive and very repetitive form. Nor are we very far from the sounds of Autechre, or, staying within German borders, of Alva Noto, who in those very years was releasing his first ambient gems. It would take a few more years for Apparat's musical fabric to thicken, with the more substantial Duplex arriving in 2003.

With Ring's talent now visible to most, his peers Modeselektor decide to combine their experience with that of Apparat, lending their expertise in effects and sound modulation to Sascha's by-now well-honed compositional skill, able to move effortlessly between electric bass, synth and percussion. Also released on BPitch Control is the debut of Moderat, moniker born precisely from the fusion of Labland's two musical souls, a charming EP titled Auf Kosten der Gesundheit, literally “at the cost of health”, with artwork once again by Brasko and co.

Though quite raw, this Ep presents in compressed form all the traits we'll later find on the trio's first Lp, even if the heavy-handed, iconoclastic touch of Modeselektor is decidedly dominant.

Tracks like “Koxring”, “Mode”, and “Russian Courier” already hint that these sample collages, propped up by the Selektor's pounding subwoofer, and the melodic, existential airiness of Apparat's master keyboard, could be something more than a mere jumble. In “Ramadan” you can hear their full passion for Autechre, for the sounds of “Incunabula”, and Anti EP, the best track on the record, seems to underline their substantial resilience through music, at the dawn of the digital era. It's a martial, solemn sound, one that seems constantly to chase the white glow capable of splitting open the leaden Teutonic sky, without ever quite finding it. The record, good as it is, fails to gain any real commercial traction.

After this first successful Ep experiment, the two projects go their separate ways for a few years: Modeselektor, following a series of extended releases, put out their Lp debut in 2005, Hello Mom!, its cover featuring the red-eyed ape that would become their logo in the years to come, eventually shaping the identity of Monkeytown Records, the label they would later found.

The record weaves hip-hop and reggae elements into its electro fiber, as in “Dancing Box”, featuring rapper TTC, and “Fake Emotion”, a collaboration with vocalist Paul St. Hilaire, a partnership destined to last throughout the duo's entire career.

Other standout moments include “In Loving Memory”, a track already featured on the same-titled 2002 Ep, “Kill Bill Vol. 4”, cocky electroclash that defines the duo's sound at least until the invasion of new Berlin labels diluted its novelty, and “Silikon”, featuring Sascha Perera. It's a work made for the dancefloor, but still immature. Despite the album release, the duo still seems more oriented toward club entertainment than toward the seriousness of the long player.

Meanwhile Apparat collaborates with Ellen Allien and composes Orchestra Of Bubbles, which came out in 2006 on BPitch Control. The album is a success, and is destined to become very well known within the minimal, especially on tracks like "Way Out", "Leave Me Alone", "Turbo Dreams" and "Jet", but the whole record stays at a consistently high level. The feeling is like watching Kreuzberg's blurred lights slide by through the grating of the U-Bahn.

2007 is the breakthrough year for both projects. Apparat releases Walls, an album far more narrative and melodic than his previous work, and decidedly more accomplished. Musically it comes much closer to the glitch and is quite close to what Four Tet is doing in his studio on British soil. Apparat, however, also brings in orchestral elements, with strings often present, and it also comes across as vocalist, as on "Leave Me Alone".

The cadenced groove of “Limelight” unleashes decidedly interesting phrasing, as do “Hailing From The Edge” and “Holdon”, which besides Sascha on backing vocals feature Raz O'Hara on lead vocals. The production is cleaner than Modeselektor's garage sounds, and the record also includes two tracks destined to become true classics of Apparat's repertoire: “You Don't Know Me”, later used in the celebrated soundtrack of “Il giovane favoloso”, a film about the life of the poet Giacomo Leopardi, from Recanati, and “Arcadia”, perhaps the high point of the now Saxon crooner's solo career. The lyric is essential, but its quality lies not so much in the plain, spontaneous language Ring uses, but in his rarefied high register, veiled by the blossoming of his arpeggiated counterpoints:

Meanwhile, Modeselektor release Happy Birthday!, decidedly more compact than its predecessor, boasting collaborations of every kind, from Apparat himself to the Maximo Park, by way of Otto von Schirach and even Thom Yorke, who back in 2005 had already called them one of the best new acts around.

“2000007” and “The Dark Side Of The Sun”, with Puppetmastaz, carry on their crooked, oddball dancehall sound, poised between Cypress Hill and Daft Punk. Tracks like “Godspeed”, “The Black Block” and especially “Let Your Love Grow”, with St. Hilaire, show off real heft, and already seem to want to pick up the thread opened with Ring on the first Ep released under the Moderat name.

Following the release of Happy Birthday! comes a long series of remix Eps spanning the whole of 2008, through which the two manage to make a name for themselves well beyond the German scene. Thom Yorke decides to bring them along as support for Radiohead's shows in Japan. And it's in that very year that, in Italy as in other countries, their name starts popping out of the hat of national DJs.

The next step, then, is to pull back out of the sheath the sound powerful and effective sound of a track like "Ramadan" and merge the duo's dualism into the perfectly equilateral triangle with Sascha Ring. They pull it off in 2009, with an album that still feels current and significant today. The debut of the Moderat on LP, again produced and backed by Ellen Allien, is decidedly a step forward not just for the three of them, but for the whole label and everyone pulling the strings behind the Pfadfinderei collective.

In the minimalist expressionism of the cover art, a young girl with a heart-shaped pendant seems, unfortunately, to be striking herself right in the face. "New Error" opens the record, and we're swept up in a relentless march driven by Ring's synthetic flourishes; a kind of therapeutic reflection, a status report on the listener's own existence. The refrain keeps expanding between compressions and releases until it finally detonates. It's a terrific opener, and you can already sense this is going to be a pretty solid record. The track will become their signature piece and will be used in ads and the like for years to come. Right after, "Rusty Nails" kicks in, and here we really feel how the fusion between the "selektors'" Dubstep approach and Sascha has become indivisible, a true trinity.

Pfadfinderei's video editing is this time outrageously beautiful in its simplicity, surely one of their most memorable collaborations, and the track distills the philosophical precision of "Arcadia" and the massive sound of "Let Your Love Grow".

The record feels like psychoanalysis for restless, solitary souls of the new millennium, and manages to crystallize, within the beauty of the listening experience, exactly that critical fragmentation of youth in the digital age, which by now tends to unconsciously distort emotional needs, constantly reshaping the self in an ongoing reformulation of what one perceives and feels within.

"Seamonkey" sounds like the name of an ocean liner out on the open sea, and that's exactly how it sounds too: full, liquid, swaying. "Slow Match" still features the raggamuffin from St. Hilaire, but the sounds breathe and feel more vivid compared to the duo's records. His nomadic voodoo crosses paths with Szary's technology, which eavesdrops from afar on a harpsichord Mozartian, in a leitmotif reminiscent of the Bristol music scene. It's music that builds in layers, that “deterritorializes.”

"3 Minutes Of Nasty Silence" ramps up the suspense for the second half of the record. The tracks that follow show more of the distinctive traits of Modeselektor's records, like the paranoid yet lyrically inspired "Sick With It", featuring Dellè, before the album swings back toward the atmospheres of Walls, even managing to work in more acidic elements with "Porc", right up to their anthem "Les Grandes Marches", another standout track, this time very much in Apparat territory.

"Berlin" is a tribute to the metropolis that's been their lifelong companion; the tellurian dub-techno of "Nr. 22" marches insistently toward the closing "Out Of Sight", which sends the record off in a calm, harmonious way. In hindsight, it's a natural yet thoroughly successful continuum of the German electronic tradition, and in the near future it will rightfully be regarded as a milestone of its era, within its genre.

The record establishes them as the new sensation of the European electronic scene. That same year they go on tour, and Resident Advisor's readers vote them Best Live Act of 2009; some tracks get remixed (worth noting Shackleton and T++ from Monolake, both of whom reinterpreted "Rusty Nails").

From here on out, it's all smooth sailing for the three of them.

Like Paul Kalkbrenner in "Berlin Calling", Bronsert and Szary present themselves in a documentary film by Amy Grill, titled "Speaking In Code". The film tells the stories of musicians and clubbers who chose electronic music as a way of life. Alongside Ellen Allien, the film also features Wolfgang Voigt (GAS) and Robert Henke of Monolake.

The shows span the whole of 2010, further confirming them as a live act on the rise. Despite the criticism their shows have attracted more recently, the tours for the first album are memorable jolts of adrenaline; Exit Festival, Cologne, Prague, Lisbon, and they even touch down live in Italy at the 2010 edition of Electro Venice. Meanwhile in Germany that same year, tragically, the Loveparade holds its final edition, one that will be sadly remembered as the Duisburg disaster, claiming as many as 21 victims; the venue's capacity is vastly exceeded by the crowd of attendees, and the situation spirals out of control. It's the dark side of the festival coin.

2011 sees them split up again to pursue their respective paths. As for Modeselektor, with the earnings from their success they manage to set up their own new label, namely Monkeytown Records, with which they debut with Monkeytown.

The record definitely boasts better production than its predecessors, and finds them immediately euphoric with "Blue Clouds", fresh off the explosive experience of the tour. "Evil Twin", "German Clap" and "Berlin" simply go on reaffirming the fullness of their sound, which by now has plenty to spare, even if the record doesn't bring any striking new ideas. It still boasts a collaboration with Thom Yorke on "Shipwreck", another one of their hits.

The gorilla has by now taken shape, dancing and vibrating within the frequencies of their music, just as on the cover art. Apparat, meanwhile, adds a further seal to his solo career with The Devil's Walk, inspired by the Percy Bysshe Shelley work of the same name, released this time on Mute in the autumn of 2011; it's a record that will be widely listened to in hindsight, especially thanks to "Goodbye", featuring the voice of Austrian artist Soap & Skin, which will go on to soundtrack films and TV series.

The record boasts some truly remarkable tracks: the first single is "Ash/Black Veil", followed by "Black Water" and "Song of Los". Another track that shows him as a skilled tailor of harmonies is "Candil De La Calle", perhaps the finest moment of the whole work.

The Devil’s Walk further accentuates Apparat's orchestral streak and his fascination with more classical instrumentation, something he'd go on to absorb into his own frame of reference. It's precisely this pursuit that will lead him toward film scores and toward a calmer, more acoustic extension of his sound, far less tied to BPM.

This path, however, draws him somewhat into a vicious circle, down roads that perhaps others had already explored in the past; the following Krieg und Frieden, launched by “Violent Sky” and “Lighton”, doesn't display the same brilliance as The Devil’s Walk, though it does boast a contribution from Philip Thimm on cello on the beautiful, nostalgic “K & F”. It's precisely the theme of “K & F” that will become quite famous in the soundtrack of “Il giovane favoloso”, inevitably becoming the musical depiction of the tormented life of the poet from the Marche region in Mario Martone's directorial reinterpretation, released the following year, in 2014.

 

Getting back to our story, after Kring und Frieden, Apparat returns to his native Germany and is called back by his two colleagues to finish their new tracks, in an attempt to recapture the magic of their first record. Released this time on the newly founded Monkeytown Records in late summer 2013, Moderat II manages to repeat, and then numerically surpass, the sales of their debut. The subject of theartwork this time by Pfadfinderei is male, and shows a man in the act of putting on a mask to cover his own face with another. "The Mark (Interlude)" seems to musically describe exactly that gesture.

This time it's a restless "Bad Kingdom" that welcomes us in, seemingly intent on narrating the unease of the character on the cover through a cinematic Dubstep, which accompanies Pfadfinderei's comic-book dystopia, in a kind of obsessive conspiracy theory for the damned of the most suffering social classes. "Versions" continues the mental film with its dub pacing, before brightening into the sunny "Let In The Light", which introduces the use of the vocoder, a novelty on this record that will go on to define them in the years to come, setting them further apart. Much like Kraftwerk did back in the golden age of electronic music, though Gernot Bronsert reinvents its use in a thoroughly personal way, in an unusual, much deeper humanoid tone.

From the linear, emblematic "Therapy", through the techno synesthesia of "Milk", the intimate detour of "Gita" and the synthetic soul of "Damaged Done", with echoes even of Japan's David Sylvian, all the way to the closing "This Time", and the twilight mood of "Last Time", released as a single, the record has no weak tracks and confirms the qualities of the first LP, even if it doesn't quite reach the same level of brilliance and impact. Commercially, it's an outright success, and it sends them back on tour throughout 2014. By now a recognizable brand pretty much everywhere, they tour across Europe from Scandinavia to the Iberian peninsula, through Poland, France, and Italy, this time playing Milan's Magazzini Generali, among other venues in central regions.

While Modeselektor coolly take part in Boiler Room sessions, Apparat, after the further notoriety granted to him, especially in Italy, by his work for Martone, begins touring with his own group of musicians, a setup he'll maintain until 2021. With Live Soundtracks, a 2015 show that takes him to Rome, Naples, Milan and Turin, Apparat returns to favor soundtrack work, while occasionally also taking on DJ sets at various clubs; it's no coincidence that he came right to Leopardi's Marche region, where the folks from Harmonized Soundsystem and the sprawling FATFATFAT crew managed to bring him live on several occasions, in a territory often closed-circuit and somewhat limited like that of the Macerata area.

Compared to the visibility Apparat manages to achieve, Modeselektor prefer to keep their feet on the ground in their homeland, but then again, these are two traits that make them complementary.

This difficulty can be seen in IIIreturning on Lp in 2016, again with the visual by Völker and Brasko; this time the ambiguous cover curiously depicts a boy in a ballerina's uniform raising his left hand. The record presents an even more pronounced use of the vocoder, which if nothing else is almost always a positive element on this record, one that doesn't excite as much as the previous two, although it still has some strong tracks, including the opener "Eating Hooks", "Intruder" and "Ghostmother", the most choral and light yet more effective than other episodes that seek intensity without finding it ("Running").

On "Finder", vocal experimentation is clearly the winning element; "Reminder" isn't bad either, and gives its best live, but the album as a whole fails to match its predecessor, and falls well short of the result achieved on the first one. This time the geometry is isosceles, tilted heavily toward Apparat's melodic, pastel-toned approach, were it not for Bronsert's vocal experimentation (which Apparat would go on to claim for his own solo albums).

This doesn't take away from the trio's chance to confirm themselves for a few more years through live performances, and this time they manage to get their frequencies across the ocean, with a tour that takes them from New York to Vancouver, passing through Chicago and other cities. In Seattle they take part in the performances of KEXP for their YouTube channel, and from this too performance it's clear that, despite the American tour being very demanding, their formula is still very much a touring one, and their output is far from exhausted.

It's in 2016, in fact, that they release Live, which puts the tour's tracklist onto long play.

Beyond the American experience, Ring continues his DJ activity in Europe, with several dates in Italy, as do Modeselektor, who nonetheless remain increasingly more grounded compared to their colleague. In 2017, then, a kind of standstill sets in, where, in order not to extinguish the flame and avoid friction and differing views, each of them steps back, allowing themselves a less frantic phase, away from the spotlight.

In 2019 they return to studio activity, respectively with Who Elsewhich however turns out lacking in bite and cohesion compared to Monkeytown, and LP5Apparat's seventh studio effort, which repeats in an even more ethereal and hazy way the echoes of The Devil’s Walkin a kind of ambient-pop that nonetheless feels a bit redundant compared to his previous records. Worth noting are the single "Dawan", "Laminar Flow" and the Dante-esque "Caronte". Apparat's output, nevertheless, seems more enduring than that of Modeselektor, helped by a tight-knit group of musicians, who will bring the record's tracks to the stage, even managing to pull off a tour European tour amid the pandemic, with dates in Italy again this year as well.

Meanwhile, Apparat manages, on a secondary front, to carry on his work in film, composing the score for Capri Revolution, again directed and co-written by Mario Martone, which follows the story of a young island girl and her attraction to a commune of freak artists from Northern Europe who have settled right there on Capri. The soundtrack, composed together with Philip Thimm, earns him the David di Donatello.

 

We finally arrive at the fateful year of the pandemic, and while Apparat manages to perform live, Modeselektor withdraw even further in search of their source, the sonic wellspring from which everything began. Thirty years have now passed since their first meeting, and from the moment they first turned the knob of their Space Echo in their little room in the German capital to the year of Covid, a great deal of water has passed under the bridge.

Extended (Monkeytown Records, 2021) is oddly released as a mixtape, and, like Apparat, the duo chooses to lend their music to a soundtrack, this time for contemporary theatre. It is in fact the soundtrack for Work, a contemporary dance performance by choreographer Corey Scott Gilbert, directed by Krsn Brasko of Pfadfinderei:

A mixtape release in 2021 seems, at the very least, unusual, vintage, almost for collectors only. But perhaps it's a symbolic gesture, a visual nod to the cassette, to tape. Perhaps they're referring precisely to those magnetic tapes from their old Roland, whose echoes carried them from Checkpoint Charlie to stages around the world. It brings to mind the melody that closes a certain "Radio-Aktivität" by Kraftwerk, but perhaps it's best to leave Ralf and Florian where they belong, so as not to burn up Moderat's creativity in reckless hype.

On October 15, 2021, Moderat announced a tour for 2022 that will also include dates in Italy. The live show is called MORE D4TA, and rearranging the anagram gives you exactly Moderat IV.

Could it be time to "rewind the tape"?

It certainly seems so, since in the spring of 2022, under that very title, MORE D4TA, the German ensemble's fourth work, sees the light of day. The pandemic period and the enforced artistic standstill led the three artists to reflect on the true meaning hidden behind the constant flow of data that governs today's society.

The album, as with its celebrated predecessors, manages to generate tense emotions through electronic blends that bring together techno, IDM, ambient, as well as kraut-rock, Dubstep and trip-hop, a compound that has the merit of hinting at what the prospects for pop music might look like in the future.

The overall quality of the track list is decidedly high, even though it doesn't include any cornerstones on the level of “A New Error”, “Rusty Nails” or “Bad Kingdom”.

The bouquet of experimental textures is chiselled by Sascha Ring's voice, co-writer of all the lyrics alongside Italian-German director Elisa Mishto.

With the exception of the driving “Neon Rats”, the tracks don't flirt with the boldest dance sounds: “Soft Edit” glides gently over vocoder waves, while “Copy Copy” dresses itself in sublime minimalism à-la Frank Ocean, before “Easy Prey” takes the fusion of Radiohead's “Kid A” / “Amnesiac”-era electro art-rock and Massive Attack's trip-hop to a new level.

Among the best moments are the sharp synth-industrial blends of “Numb Bell” and the symbolic glow given off by “Fast Land”, a slow-burning track that grows by feeding on inventive electronic melodies.

MORE D4TA doesn't just offer a new testament from some of the finest figures of the German electronic elite scene, but also prompts a reflection on what's happened in recent times, where isolation and the media's flood of information have sadly become a permanent background noise, a crevice in which the harvesting of data on the habits and customs of the world's population has literally overwhelmed art and culture.

It takes another four years for the Apparat name to resurface, with Sascha Ring attempting to pull himself out of a long creative block. A Hum Of Maybe marks the restart, relying in part on the certainties of deeply accomplished craftsmanship while offering a series of ideas still in need of sharpening. What becomes clear from the very first listen is the absence of a strong idea, a lack of cohesion in how the tracklist unfolds. The usual ingredients are all still there: the electronics are dazzling and mesh with pinpoint precision into the instrumental side, the voice knows how to fit itself to the intended atmosphere, moving from the emphatic ambient pop of “Tilth” – shared with KÁRYYN – to the downtempo, chamber-like cadences of “Enough For Me”. 

Among the attempts to find new directions, the episodes that emerge are those more firmly anchored to the past, not coincidentally the most effective chapters of the bunch. That's the case with “Hum Of Maybe”, with the skilful interplay of melody and breakbeat on “A Slow Collision”, and with the magnetic “An Echo Skips A Name”. 

What comes out of it is a transitional album, certainly not to be counted among the German musician's best work, but kept well above average by a brilliant compositional ability – the very thing that has made Ring a cornerstone of the electronic idiom – and by a flawless production.