released December 17, 2023

VITAL WEEKLY

You probably never heard of Eardrops before; I didn't either. I do know the two musicians behind the name very well. From Denmark, we have Claus Poulsen, who I know from a string of collaborations and solo work. From Germany, we have Sascha Stadlmeier, best known as EMERGE, but also from his ongoing duo with Chris Sigdell as Bu.d.d.A and many other collaborations. I think they mean serious business by taking on a proper band name. One evening exactly to this day one year ago, they sat together. Poulsen with his zither, pedals, dictaphone, SK-1 (an ancient sampling device from Casio) and Stadlmeier with a violin, effects, field recordings, and manipulations. This disc, however, doesn't contain the pure improvisations from that day, but in the following months, the music was expanded and edited. What struck me was the gentle tone of these five pieces. You could say this is ambient music, but it also contains enough elements to say this is improvisation and experimental music. Especially the two instruments here, the zither and violin, are plucked and bowed freely, with the sound drifting off through a line of delay pedals. But effects and field recordings brew more drifting sound textures with other electronics. I could almost believe there is a synthesizer or two at work here, but just as well, these might be circling loops from pedals, picking up sound, pumping them around. The music is slow and spacious but with a soft edge of noise never too far away, which prevents the listener from taking it all too easily. That is the kind of ambient I like, one that isn't connected to the world of all things lo-fi but an exciting diversification of its own.

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