Angel – 26000
Angel – despite its name – isn’t that nice and easy to digest. Even if one part of the group, Dirk Dresselhaus, who is probably most know for his works as Schneider TM, might give you the impression that it ventures into more pop-influenced territories. The project between Dresselhaus and Ilpo Väisänen from Pan Sonic explores the dark and grim territory of noise, drone and electro-acoustic music. It is already the sixth recording they release. This time they are supported by a large number of renowned ambient artists such as BJ Nilsen, Hildur Gudnadottir or Oren Ambarchi, who all explore similar sonic fields.
26000 can be split into two main topics. On the one side there are the heavy weight drones paired with rumbling electronic noises, reverberated clanks and feedbacks, on the other side are the lighter, more open sounding pieces, which lean more towards electro acoustic experimentation. Here, off-kilter drumming goes hand in hand with hissy fieldrecordings and slight processing. The darker tracks work as a sonic parenthesis giving the album a circular character, where the end meets the start again.
26000 has a lot of amazing sonic detail and texture, but at some points it comes across a little too predicable and easy. The edges seem a tad too smooth and the cracks not deep enough. Maybe it is the circular structure, maybe the two topics are set against each other a bit too obviously. Although, when it comes to the droning, deep parts tough, the intensity is immense – the bass pumping and pushing the speaker cones, the feedback cutting fiercely – a collection of just these moments and movements would worked maybe better.
