HAUSCHKA - Salon des amateurs

Mister Volker Bertelmann, after years in the world of modern classical, felt like making a techno record. I'm telling you this because you'd never guess it on your own. "Salon des amateurs" is in fact a splendid album, suspended between minimalism and folktronica, but without any obvious trace of the formal coldness it's supposedly inspired by (or claims to be, going by the artist's own statements).

On the contrary, it's warm and sparkling. Welcoming. It calls to mind plenty of beautiful, playful things, all sharing a transparent, dreamlike approach: Four Tet, Yann Tiersen, Nico Muhly, Múm (who "lend" him drummer Samuli Kosminen).

The timbres are almost all acoustic, and the heavy lifting is done by "small" sounds of every kind: pizzicato strings, jingles, wood-on-wood ticking, brushes scraping across cymbals, the rattle of bells and assorted bric-a-brac. And then there's the piano, the record's ever-present master, who nonetheless prefers to stay out of the spotlight, blending into the forest of little noises and tlin-tlan sounds, discreetly giving structure to the compositions.

So what's techno about "Salon des amateurs", then? Something in the rhythms, sure. Or rather: the fact that there are rhythms at all, that the percussive element is front and center.

Every melodic figure that recurs in loop form is, first and foremost, a building block within an imaginative, layered rhythmic architecture. Call-and-response patterns, instrumental grafts and inventive tonal colors construct an interlocking puzzle that keeps reinventing itself, scrambling accents and meters along the way.

But that's not all, it must be said. Here and there, half-hidden, electronic textures and straight beats peek through. Rather than evoking dancefloor ecstasy, though, they bring to mind the countless rhythms and flows of the natural world. The teeming life of any given sunny day.

And you know what? Outside the wind is blowing, the sky is blue, and I head out with "Salon des amateurs" in my ears. Enjoy your listening too.

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03/07/2011