If Markus Guentner really titled this after his birth year, then where is my fucking AARP card? He's only three years younger than me, but that means that in 2001, when he made In Moll, his solo debut on Kompakt, he was only 20. Twenty!
Sure, In Moll was rather shameless Gas worship. (Gas being the drowsy Arcadian ambient project of Kompakt founder Wolfgang Voigt.) It shared Voigt's love of soft-focus, gently chugging house beats (nicked from Chain Reaction and then dusted down with baby powder and packed in gauze) and synths with plenty of vaseline on the mix. What it lacked was Voigt's overall denseness of massed orchestral samples (his synth equivalent) that made GAS records like Pop such an overwhelming yet wombing experience. (Number one bedtime album, 2000 to present.) In Moll was sparser, cleaner, and more pulse-based. It was also fucking gorgeous.
Well, I am pleased to report that four years on very little has changed. Guentner still sounds like he's happy exploring ever more subliminal notes in an unending wash of hyper-sustained synth chords. The beats again sound as if they're moving through a tarpit made of cotton candy. The only major deviation is "Hi-Jacked", a sludgly, mid-tempo shuffle that only stands out because it approaches actual music amidst its narcotized surroundings. The rest is a million shades of shimmer, crackle, and pulse.
Wait, am I pleased? There's a fine line between exploring a set range of sounds or a delineated mood, and out-and-out self-parody. Guentner hasn't crossed it yet, but Kompakt and contemporaries have pretty steadily horsewhipped the idea of 21st century new age over successive Pop Ambient comps, full lengths, the wine bar at the back of Hard Wax (the password is "strudel"), etc. Guentner is capable of more: check his breezy proto-Junior Boys remix of Coloma's "Summer Clothes" for proof. In another four years, I hope he's raided some Germanic garage sales for leftover vocals (I hear Superpitcher's got yards of them), beats with treads on them, whatever. In the meantime, take the above numerical rating as a sleepytime guide to a soundtrack for a good rest. With stuff like this, it's not a diss.
