TranscendNoise

Continuing their run of EPs and widening their scope, Raime´s return with "We Can´t Be That Far From The Beginning" isn´t just another turn in this progression, but sees the UK duo starting their own label RR and opening up anticipation for more to come and maybe even other artists to rise. While Am I Using Content or Is Content Using   Me? saw Raime opening their style up for the unimaginable flood of information, snippets, and samples in an unusually reggeaton colored palette, We Can´t Be That Far builds on these experiences while folding back on elements of their studio albums. From the start "In Media Res" is the seamless connection to Am I Using Content : The chromatic stutter winds up before being underlined with a bouncy synth line. However, a departure is imminent after only a minute. The vocal sample "I am tired" peaks in repetition and a call and response like scheme, underlined by strings and a complete dissolution of any repetition, bea...

This review is a change of pace and topic for me. I usually don´t really get into much German Hip Hop. The themes most of the time seem one-sided and while in terms of sonic diversity there might be much going on, the expressive quality for the most part doesn’t exceed superficiality. But, and this is the one thing I admire the German side for, there is a certain kind of introspection and critical outlook on the world, that is unique to this locality. There are many imitators and imposter's of the American expression: the turn-up idiocy, the gangster and hard-ass narrative, but moving beyond that, most central to a unique expression in German hip hop seems to be a deeper struggle with the sense of self and achievement in life and society.  Most prominently, I´d put Casper’s 2011 album XOXO : A multifaceted expression of aggression, melancholy and frustration that lives from Casper channeling his generation and its perspective on live through songs dealing with suici...

Auburn Lull - Hiber Revisiting my heroes from the past, I sat down and listened to Begin Civil Twilight . Immediately I remembered the pain of getting a copy of this album and the whole catalogue from Auburn Lull. Living in Germany I could not mail-order those records from Darla, the record label, because I didn´t have a credit card. So I took to Amazon and ordered… and waited. After about two months I could say it, “I own everything from Auburn Lull” and none of the CD cases were intact. Fuck you, postage system from six years earlier!  Aside from this little anecdote, I remembered a quit and contemplative nature, which only this kinds of music could give me. I never thought about it as ambient or shoegaze, more like soundscape artists that happened to have singing included. If there is any time for their music it must be fall, swaying synths like fog rising or an early setting of the sun. Auburn Lull were pure distance for me, a taste of spiritual isolation from e...