Immerse yourself in the subtle, mesmerising soundscapes of "Inlandish"
Most pop music announces itself brashly, so it is always intriguing to come across an album that refuses to play the game. Inlandish, the latest collaboration between the German electronic music pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius and the Ohio-based composer Tim Story, does just that. It belongs to the amorphous genre known as ambient, lacking vocals or drum beats and tending towards introspection. The music sounds understated at first; it is only when your ears are tuned in to every subtle rise and fall that it comes alive.
The 12 short pieces are structured around a series of piano and organ parts played by Roedelius, to which Story has added synthesiser, woodwind and string accompaniments. Roedelius's piano-playing is the driving force throughout the album, whether in the slow, melancholy arabesques up and down the keyboard, which bear the influence of Debussy, or in the circular minimalist phrases that Story layers, one on top of the other.
The word "soundscapes" is often lazily used to describe music that lacks an easy hook. Here, however, it is entirely appropriate. Story, whose own music has been acclaimed for its blend of classical instrumentation with electronics, uses synthesised whirring and humming to create an aura around Roedelius's piano. Just as the melodies flit beguilingly between major and minor keys, so the accompaniments become more or less discordant. On the track "Serpentining", a pretty tune teasingly emerges from what at first sounds like atonal mush. On "House of Glances", piano and a faintly distorted chorus of synthesisers underpin a question-and-answer melody, played by what could be oboes, though it's hard to tell, because the sound is filtered through various electronic effects.
This habit of debasing the sound of acoustic instruments runs through the album, creating a sense of unreality. Other composers aim to evoke the aesthetics of the natural environment, but Roedelius and Story's is an internal landscape - as the album's title suggests. The effect is one of being transported into a world similar to, but not quite the same as, our own.
In the case of the opening track, "As It Were", you can no longer hear the slide of fingertips along cello strings; Story has distorted and drawn out the sound so that it floats above the music, seemingly without origin. Only on the closing track, "Intermittent Haiku", do human voices feature, and even then, it is as a ragged chorus of indistinct chanting, almost drowned out by the music-box melody above.c
Elsewhere, simple themes are repeated and drawn out to breaking point, as in the trance-like "Beforst". The rolling piano line on here sounds innocuous enough at first, but its insistence, coupled with a breathy accompaniment and the vaguest hint of a skittering beat, gives the piece a quiet intensity.
Roedelius began his career in the late 1960s as part of the group Cluster, who used synthesisers to make ethereal, spaced-out music and have been a major influence on artists from Brian Eno to Aphex Twin. They belonged to a period of intense creativity in German pop music that lasted throughout the 1970s and was mockingly dubbed "Krautrock" by a British music press more in tune with the down-to-earth stomping of glam acts such as Slade. Along with bands like Can - an "anarchist community" composed of travelling hippies and former students of Karlheinz Stockhausen - and Kraftwerk, ancestors of modern dance music, Cluster pushed the boun daries of pop to breaking point.
In its own understated fashion, Inlandish explores new sonic possibilities. Ambient music, by its very nature, always strays perilously close to the tag of easy listening. I have struggled to describe this album to friends in terms that make it sound appealing, and have ended up sounding either inarticulate ("Um, yeah, it's nice, it's peaceful") or woefully nerdy ("minimalist, neoclassical post-Krautrock", anyone?). But that is because it is music that refuses to reach out and grab you; it waits quietly for your undivided attention.
Story describes Inlandish as "a sort of new or contemporary classical music". I would disagree. There are hints at classical forms - a touch of counterpoint here and there; a familiar chord progression or two - but in essence this remains pop music: spooky, voiceless and abstract, but delivered in discrete four-minute bursts. There is plenty to satisfy the casual listener, but you would be doing yourself a disservice to stop at that. Inlandish is a record you can immerse yourself in.
"Inlandish" by Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Tim Story is out now on Grönland Records. For more information, visit: www.groenland.com
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