“It is difficult to to break new grounds nowadays. There is a huge amount of young people who now work on Ambient Music, like the Leverage Models, Four Tet or this german guy, Bernhard Wöstheinrich […]” Pete Townshend
Genre, however, sticks out. It is an evocative ambient record that will leave the listener spellbound. Recorded with the intention of being explicit, noisy and at the same time very refined, these six tracks find a dark, and yet playful angle to dub, krautrock, and ambient – like Bill Laswell on Benzos or a Tangerine Dream recorded in an empty space hangar.
The raw material for Genre was recorded in a long day of recording at Horus Studios in Hannover, joined by Markus Reuter. Reuter did not just man the vintage analogue recording deck, but also manipulated the incoming signals in real-time, routing them through a mindblogglingly complex array of guitar pedals. “At the end of the day, I had no idea if it sounded particularly inspired or how much of it was usable,” Wöstheinrich admits.
As it turned out, there were plenty of inspiring moments in those recordings. During weeks of studio work, the tracks were edited and refined into a finished album. Thick ganja clouds are blown over the hypnotic abstract drumless beats. There are long stretches of scratchy soundscapes, bizarre and quirky. Most of all, however, there is a lot of space and listening to be found here.
The song titles picture the intertwining of identities represented by the use of words found in both German and English. However, the words of the song titles have a completely different meaning in each language.
The new music of Genre is to move forward – there is a lot of grid to be found in those sounds, but also featuring a blend of unsettling, haunting melodies, and lush, expansive soundscapes.
It is a audacious statement, carving out its own identity.
It is a music that can feel disorienting at times. But when breaking new grounds, that comes with the territory.
credits
Bernhard Wöstheinrich: Synthesizers, Keyboards, Live-Arrangement
Mixing & editing: Bernhard Wöstheinrich
Produced by Markus Reuter and Bernhard Wöstheinrich
Recorded at Horus Sound Studio, Hanover, Germany, on October 31, 2022.
Recording Engineer: Benjamin Schäfer
Mastering: Markus Reuter
Artwork by Bernhard Wöstheinrich,
From the image ‘Saint John the Baptist’ by Giulio Campagnola, 1505 a. D.
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