ALTOSTRATUS TRANSLUCIDUS

Named after a condensed, rainfall-including weather situation, Sven Schienhammer develops a directorial melange of dub influences, chord arrangements, minimalism and field recordings over the course of 11 tracks. Both individualistic and drawer-defying, Schienhammer arranges compressing instrumental compositions without any copycat allures whose sensitively spreading emotionality draws from the analog production methods. Its emphasis on warm and cold chords in particular in combination with playful fields of white noise files shifts the album near Wolfgang Voigt's minimal GAS imprint as well as the early pre-90s home listing era in both dramaturgy and sound. On Altostratus Translucidus, Sven Schienhammer puts across technical skills in combining the diffused intensity of minimal club aesthetic with powerful chords whose unpretentious minimalism modulates the first half of the album, making it easily recognizable. The album's final quarter heavily devotes to resonating dub and abstract trip hop interconnections between the pads which reflect Schienhammer's influences in aesthetic modesty. Thus all the tracks form a closed system which portray the essential quintessence of the album's meteorological title: volume - concentration - discharge. The associated focusing of auditive expression manages the balancing act between new age chill out and half clock steered club feeling. Altostratus Translucidus draws it's energy from the unparalleled presentation of not being pigeonholed in a single genre while musically reflecting current events. Often labeled the heir of basic channel sound, the artist softens the basic attitude of his musical lead and wipes out his traces in the raw and analogue grain of his music through meditatively unfolding rhythms.