Following on from Last Years Moods And Dances, Hamburg based Richard Von der Schulenburg (RVDS) is back with more kraut synth music for the dystopia of today and beyond.
The album opens with the school bell ringing at the start of Schoolyard Sweets that's a pensive synth led memorial to the glory days of Sherbet Dib-Dabs and sweet tobacco or the German equivalents, it has a haunting feel as the sparse percussion seems to take centre stage, no one's touched the humbugs, the tune lasts almost as long as a pear drop.
Darkest Planet has minimal lyrics and music, about just how dark things are right now, as RVDS slips into a covid hole of despondency, this is a tune for your darkest loneliest moments when you think there really is no way out or back from where you are.
Daily Circles is stuck inside a repeating loop where every day has become the same, your locked down and lonely, climbing the walls and listening jealously to the birdsong outside, as they sound so free, as you weep into your home-made Kartoffel that's never as good as your mum's classic one, this has a dreamy borderline nightmare feel to it.
Future Night is a very gently morbid almost organ like synth piece that morphs into the gently uplifting Cosmic Diversity that feels like it's hopeful for a better world, were all the cosmic diversity is celebrated and works together. With a shimmering almost glowing feel to the pulsing synths and careful keyboard line with an elastic bass RVDS explores the Kosmiche Cosmos as a sample of Sir Richard Attenborough talking about our globally diverse planet comes in to make the point more clearly about where man is going wrong.
Reset My Brain is almost a techno dancefloor banger with the title repeating over and over as the pills start to hit and you go off on your journey into the next phase, the new world that insistent bassline and almost shaken beat doing all the tweaking to make sure you are ready to go forth with your reconfigured brain.
Dance Of The Plutos imagine a Disney cartoon with a dozen dancing cloned Plutos doing all sorts of weird and odd dog things with Mickey and Donald and it being backed by sparse electronica rather than weird 50's jazz, as things get messy the strings kick in and it gets properly spacey.
The album closes with Rain In Romance that as the title suggests is rather prettier sounding and opens with a gently keyboard caress as the music seems to envelope you in a big hug, as the rain splatters around you and the odd sirens start to call you towards them. When RVDS starts to talk about moments in rain it starts to have echoes with Moments In Love only this is a darker side of love to that.
Find out more at https://shop.tapeterecords.com/records/bureaub/rvds-cosmic-diversity.html https://www.facebook.com/richard.schulenburg.9
