Moritz Von Oswald has an acute ear for rhythm and an oblique way of expressing it. A percussionist by training, he’s been subverting techno’s omnipresent thump since the early '90s, when he was one half of the Berlin duo Basic Channel and the four-on-the-floor beat’s primacy still remained largely unchallenged. Over the years his beats have grown even subtler as he’s figured out ways to maintain techno’s propulsive needs without falling back on its tropes, and connected it to styles like dub in an attempt to create some sort of abstract, weightlessly chill sonic space.
One of Von Oswald’s favorite tricks is to take the heavy workload that in techno tracks usually falls on the kick drum and redistribute it across the few other instruments in his typically high-minimalist compositions. An inspired sonic engineer, he often enlists keyboard licks or delay effects to carry more rhythmic weight than usual, and as a result his compositions are urgent and danceable but rarely revolve around a 4/4 kick.
Von Oswald’s found an ideal partner in master drummer Tony Allen, who’s been creating trance-inducing works that duck and dive around the beat since his days as Fela’s chief rhythmic architect. Allen’s recently joined Von Oswald and modular synth guru Max Loderbauer in Von Oswald’s namesake trio, taking over for Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti (aka Vladislav Delay) on drums, and their first album together shows that the group’s quickly cohered into something interesting.
The addition of a superstar collaborator, along with S**ounding Lines’ open-ended arrangements and tracks that are numbered instead of named, all suggest the kind of high-powered jam session that usually sounds better on paper than on record, but Allen, Von Oswald, and Loderbauer work well together. Their playing has a loose, improvisatory feel but a strong sense of purpose. Even when they stretch a groove out toward the 10-minute mark they maintain the cohesiveness of a good jazz combo.
Jazz has become one of the Trio’s touchstones, or at least it’s made itself more present on Sounding Lines than on earlier recordings. Clearly a lot of that influence comes from Allen, whose expressive style has its roots in Art Blakey and Max Roach’s frenetic but focused performances. The album opener "1" starts out centered around a happily burbling synth bass line, but Allen’s hi-hat takes the lead for a sizable chunk of the track’s 10 minutes, and his bop-inspired playing is so expressive and so casually virtuosic–and Loderbauer and Von Oswald’s backup is so judiciously minimal–that he easily pulls it off.
Elsewhere the group brings some of its other influences to the front, to varying effect. On "4" they fully indulge their dub sides, and the resulting track works better when you let yourself get caught up in its gently wafting mood than if you focus in on what it’s actually doing. "7", on the other hand, dives headfirst into '70s jazz funk with a cheeky clavinet riff and greasy hi-hats, and manages to strip away the decades of kitsch that those signifiers have accumulated, rediscovering an unexpected vibrancy lurking underneath.
At its best moments, Sounding Lines drifts in an intriguingly ambiguous space where each member invokes the genres they’re best known for playing while bending generously to accommodate their partners—Von Oswald bringing out his underutilized funky side, Allen using his inimitable Afrobeat style to sculpt a techno beat in negative space, and Loderbauer washing the whole thing in warm ambience. The three showcase a strong and singular shared vision, and in the moments where the music pulls you in deep enough to share it with them, it’s a beautiful thing.
