Solo Works. KolleKtion 7. by Moebius compiled by Asmus Tietchens
This is a sort of best of Dieter Moebius' 7 solo albums and avoids any of his work in Cluster, Kluster or Harmonia, or his many other collaborations to focus just on those solo albums. This has been compiled by one of his many musical collaborators Asmus Tietchens to showcase the breadth and originality of his solo works.
The album opens with Rattenweisel that's a looped-up piece of synth ambient techno with one foot on the dancefloor and one foot in the chill out room.
Hoffnungsschimmer sounds like he's looped a Didgeridoo through an effects box next to a resonator to create a cartoon anomaly and the ray of hope the title alludes too. This feels kind of wobbly and rather bass heavy.
Flag has heavy industrial factory sounds repeating and drilling into your brain like some huge Hoffman press keeps going down, as the lighter keyboard part comes in to distort things further making it a masterclass in oddness.
The Tracker almost feels like an ambient techno sonar exploration with clanging sounds that could come from the inner working of a U-Boat, this feels like it's underwater as a typewriter bell rings continually and we plumb the depths, the Siren starts calling out to us like a latter-day Aqua Marina.
Rast almost asks more questions once you ask what Rast means, than the music gives answers too, I hope this is about the test for allergies rather than any of the more disturbing meanings, or the Game of thrones character, But of course he could just want a Rest not that this is at all restful, musically this is sci-fi dancefloor music with clattering gamelan percussion and a slow precise keyboard loop at it's heart that all the other stuff goes off around.
Markt has nice keyboard swirls, weird vocal interjections, odd percussion and wood block noises and a smorgasbord of ideas.
Alaise feels like it has many layers, they are all interacting as the basic loops get squiggled over, with synth stabs, the handclaps go up against the squelchy bass, while cartoon segments taking us who knows where.
Tiefenbahnen has a spooky gamelan approach like a really weird horror film vibe, or a weirder than the original re-make of Metropolis, as this tune comes from Moebius album of that name. As the bells start to toll towards the end of the tune it feels like the producers were giving a nod to the fact that this was on a record that was completed after Dieter Moebius death in 2015.
The album closes with Das Ende appropriately and it feels like the outro music for the end credits to roll over, this has a trombone and strings and is gently elegiac.
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