Category: Music

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Electric Sewer Age – Contemplating Nothingness

Electronic ambient with some oriental instrumentation and spoken words, but the most powerful bit and its most unique voice is at the end in the last two tracks, which are totally detached fromt he arc of the album by the way. Actually I’d rather have those two separately as an EP and be happy with it.

Self Doubting Trip is a cinematic-atmospheric soundscape with a tight beat and tense tune, like when the big reveal of an exciting movie is just being unfolded. Then in Dekotur this continues with some chiming sounds and a whole lot of layers building up very slowly. This latter bit actually feels a lot like the beginning of Johnny Jewel’s Vapor, the two could nicely play after one another. (It’s like the end of Terminator and the beginning of the Matrix.)

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Tobias – 1972

Four mid-tempo techno tracks from four angles, very different approaches and sounds, what connects them is the trippy feeling of them all. First it’s bouncing back and forth between ears in stereo, then it’s a phaser modulating all over the place, later it takes an epic hallucinogenic journey ala The Orb with a spoken word meditation guide. A more chilled and easy to listen choice for an Ostgut Ton release.

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Anti-Flag – 20/20 Vision

Good punk rock with a proper average track length below three minutes. And just like any politically charged punk rock in 2020 it’s an all around anti-Trump statement. Coming from Anti-Flag who self-admittedly “have actively chosen to not attack presidents directly”. It’s another record in the long list of such albums spanning now across so many different genres.

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Phase Fatale – Scanning Backwards

It sounds like a classic industrial-EBM album from many years ago getting a remaster in 2020 with a techno heart. Sounds like an abandoned factory, heavy beats, greasy and steamy noises, distorted synths, slow marching rhythms. It is something not new but refreshing to hear. This could only possibly come from Berlin, has a cosy home at Ostgut Ton.

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Johnny Jewel – Vapor

One of my go-to focus music for the past month. Cinematic ambient with chiming sounds, dark textures, monumental spaces, it’s quite a journey. I see the full movie playing in my mind. Also great for reading, especially something eerie, mystical, or set in outer space.

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Recondite – Dwell

Techno and house in its rhythms but with a slow tempo and with lots of atmospheric sounds. Beautiful music, too, in a blue and moody sense.

When you put on noise cancelling headphones and listen to this in the middle of a busy city it’s like a movie about a civilization in decay and the meaninglessness of everyday life. The scene when you’re watching them run around in their little useless lives and you already know but they don’t that their fraglie mudball planet is on an all-erasing collision course with a huge asteroid. Could be a soundtrack to Melancholia.