3.5

Release data:

Steve Hauschildt – Strands
LP/CD/DIGITAL DOWNLOAD, Kranky, 2016

With “Strands”, Cleveland-based composer Steve Hauschildt presents his listeners a fascinating analogue trip into spacey and surreal ambient landscapes without wandering in darker territory.

The album is a song cycle about cosmogony and creation/destruction myths, its title alludes to the structural constitution of ropes as the artist wanted to approach the compositions so that they consisted of strands and fibers which form a unified whole. In addition, the scent of classic German electronic music isn’t disguised in any way while the use of the calming, blurred soundscapes and swelling textures lend something magical to the first three tracks where some tiny percussive trickles surface as well.

The IDM-ish “Ketracel” turns out more active with its dark beats and abstract-quirky aural design. Thereafter, atmospheres submerge again in soft mourning mood on “Time we have”, somewhat reminding of the atmosphere of Pieter Nooten and Michael Brook’s “Sleeps with the Fishes”.
Melancholy also sprinkles gently on the intelligently-sequenced title piece (making my mind wander back to the ’80’s work of Steve Roach and Thomas Ronkin), followed by muffled Eno/Budd-esque piano and ethereal spherics on the “Transience of Earthly Joys” where all breathes loneliness. This piece could have done without the distortive aural element, which also applies to a few other spots on the 40-minute album. Still, “Strands” is a remarkable and rather deepening ambient trip I for one wished would have lasted longer.

Website: stevehauschildt.bandcamp.com