Artist : Apparat
Album : Walls
Label : Infine
Genre : Electronic
Bitrate : 196 kbps avg
Source : CD (LP)
Playtime : 00 : 59 :54 (85.4MB)
Rls date : 2007-05-28
Store date : 2007-05-28
1. not a Number 3:59
2. Hallin From The Edge (Feat. Raz Ohara) 3:40
3. Useless Information 4:04
4. Limelight 4:12
5. Holdon (Feat. Raz Ohara) 4:10
6. Fractales Pt.1 3:34
7. Fractales Pt.1 2:06
8. Birds 5:03
9. Arcadia 5:10
10.You Don't Know Me 4:24
11.Headup (Feat. Raz Ohara) 5:06
12.Over And Cover (Feat. Raz Ohara) 5:07
13.Like Porcelain 9:19
APPARAT, aka Berlin's SASCHA RING, has had one hell of a
year. His collaboration with ELLEN ALLIEN, the critically
acclaimed album Orchesta of Bubbles, forged electrifying
new connections between techno, electro and pop music.
They developed the material into an electrifying live show
that wowed clubs and festival audiences the world over.
Apparat kept honing his solo show at the same time,
delivering a powerful electro/techno laptop attack that
would leave crowds twitching in its wake. And somewhere,
in between all those activities, he managed to record
Walls, his first solo studio album since 2003's Duplex.
Despite its title, Walls isn't about dividing lines.
Instead, it describes a circle that pulls many elements
together into a protected, enclosed space where they
jostle and roam free: strings and mallet instruments; rock
guitar and gravelly sawtooth synths; stuttering digital
percussion and muscular studio drumming.
"This record isn't really a focused and conceptual
production," says Apparat. "It's more of a 'last-two-years
of Apparat compilation.' That's why there's so much
different stuff on it, a lot of different influences. What
can I do-when I worked with Ellen we had a certain amount
of time and a plan of what we wanted to do. When I made
Walls I was just collecting some of the best ideas out of
a folder with around 70 unfinished tracks, and finished
them." [ ... ]
In fact, all of Walls could be, perhaps should be,
considered pop-but call it pop by any other means. Apparat
has melded his genius as a sound designer with his growing
songwriting talents to craft 14 songs brimming with ideas,
energy, texture, light, color. They are hummable,
embraceable, swimmable, possibly edible. They feel as
ephemeral as clouds and as solid as the ground you're
standing on-a fitting contradiction for a record that
draws equally from software and acoustic instrumentation.
Maybe Walls takes its title in reference to Phil Spector's
famous "wall of sound," because listening to the record
it's easy to imagine a massive sonic surface that first
looms before you and then lets you pass through, pliant
and porous.
Appropriately, for such an enfolding form, Walls
ultimately isn't only a solo joint: a number of talented
artists assisted Herr Ring on the final project, from
TELEFON TEL AVIV's JOSH EUSTIS, who did the album's final
mixdown in Chicago, to MARIA HINZE, who painted the cover.
(Ring met Hinze years ago when she painted an entire room
of an exhibition based on APPARAT's music.) KATHRIN
PF-NDER and LISA VERENA STEPF (Complexacord), who worked
with Apparat on his Sizilium EP, play the string
arrangements that give the record so much of its warmth;
JгRG W-HNER, a colleague from APPARAT's home town, plays
drums on "Halo" and "When." "Lime," a leftover from
Apparat's Duplex, features KLAS YNGBORN, who also sang on
that album. And another Sizilium veteran shows up to sing
on four songs: the talented RAZ OHARA, whose album The
Last Legend (Kitty-Yo, 2001) is surely one of the great
classics of moody, post-electronic pop. His voice-smoky,
pained, plaintive yet determined-makes for the perfect
foil for APPARAT's electro/organic timbres and pliant
structures. APPARAT himself lends his own vocals to the
other three songs with vocals, and lo and behold, he's as
impressive a singer as he is a producer, whipping up a
golden falsetto (on "Arcadia") that could give THOM YORKE
a run for his money.
Of his process, SASCHA RING says, "I was bored of too much
programming. My studio is quite a playground these days.
Lots of instruments. I'm running around like crazy when
I'm inspired and I record, record and record." Maybe Walls
refers to climbing them, then? To finding an escape from
routine? In the end, it really doesn't matter what kind of
metaphor you try to find in the title. Walls houses a
magic box: a compact hour of music that promises to give
back many times as much in pleasure, cementing Apparat's
reputation as one of the most exciting, unexpected and
musically generous artists working today.
