Experimental post-electro (aka IDM) tends to be an earthly affair, scuffing its rhythmic feet down a lane littered with gravelly transients; techno and trance more often than not are aerial feats, arcing sky-high. Orchestra of Bubbles manages to capture both trajectories at once. Like some crazy amusement park ride, you feel yourself ascending and descending at the same time; it's a simultaneous come-up and come-down, a combo rocket takeoff and marshmallow-factory landing. Which is to say, this isn't merely an impressive record: It's a remarkable feat of engineering.
The brief is basic; just like the album jacket says, Orchestra of Bubbles is a collaboration between Ellen Allien, proprietor of Berlin's excellent Bpitch Control label, and Apparat, co-director (alongside T. Raumschmiere) of the Shitkatapult imprint. And for anyone versed in both artists' work-- Allien's melodic, electro-infused techno and Apparat's often melancholic, detail-packed, granular bit-crunchings-- the combined effort sounds much like you might have expected, or indeed hoped. The rhythms toggle between techno's glide and electro-breaks' syncopated lurch; Allien's contrapuntal sensibilities shine through in dozens of interlocking pieces; and Apparat's downcast inclinations burst forth from every plaintive phrase. Apparat's production hallmarks, particularly his sense of space and his fondness for pulverizing grain delay, are all over the record, and they mesh wonderfully with Allien's enormous analog leads; the sheer sound of the thing is fuller than anything either artist has released-- in comparison, even Allien's recent, effusive Thrills sounds thinner.
Orchestra of Bubbles, an appropriately synaesthetic title if ever there were one, is an immersive record, from the rush and whir that open "Turbo Dreams", the album's lead cut (and single), to the whitecapped guitar chords and percolating delay that end the closing "Bubbles". Both artists have upped their stylistic range here: "Bubbles" borrows the Orb's ambient dub and Barbara Morgenstern's singer-songwriting, with a damn-near emo touch; "Retina", a crazy carousel of sawing cellos and bright, arpeggiated keyboards, sounds a lot like Steve Reich. (And maybe a little like Dead Can Dance-- but then, Bpitch always did have a bit of a hidden goth sensibility.) "Metric", meanwhile, traces dubstep's infiltration of Berlin; the strings-- real ones!-- might not be orthodox over at Tempa HQ, but there's no mistaking that seismic wobble.
The triangle hiding behind the beat on "Metric" is one of my favorite individual sounds on the album, which seems appropriate given the way the Orchestra swings between the micro and the macro. The songwriting-- almost every cut is far too composed to qualify for "trackiness"-- is masterful, but it's also easy to miss, considering how captivating all the details are. It's not just the individual sounds that dazzle, but the seeming surface of it all, a fusion of digital, analog-electronic, and acoustic timbres so richly textured it feels almost tactile.
Despite the enormous fluffy clouds of grain and reverb, the album never stops moving-- even the loosest of their bass lines work like billows to keep blowing things forward. (Occasionally, the funk is more obvious: "Floating Points" borrows its boompty from !!!'s "Me and Guiliani...", surprising as it may sound.) But they leaven their momentum with tentativeness, never simply pushing the beat toward climax but stopping to explore the little loopholes in time and psychoacoustic space. "Jet", the album's highlight, wants to have it all ways at once: a compact funk bass line below, misty pads on top, and then a nimbly twisting arpeggio that goes shooting through it all like a giant's vine. A high-pitched, trombone-like sound melts like hot plastic from unseen heights, and everything feels at once within reach and incredibly far away. Readers of Alice in Wonderland will recognize this symptom as micropsia, which might make sense: Allien and Apparat have burrowed one of the most magical rabbit-holes you'll explore this year.
