BERNHARD WÖSTHEINRICH

Contemporary Tangerine Dream-inspired krautrock.

Gather together everything you think you know about Berlin-based electronica and “sequencer journeys” and… don’t throw it away. Elsewhere is very much, from soup to nuts, of the krautrock school, specifically the class taught by early-to-mid Tangerine

Dream. It presses all the right buttons if you’re into that scene. This is by no means a criticism: Wöstheinrich is a sound artist who loves his musical ancestors to the point of near-total immersion. He once collaborated with Conrad Schnitzler (and has also worked with Tim Bowness and Ash Ra Tempel’s Harald Grosskopf), and his first album in 2000 (as half of Blast, with Markus Reuter) was an overt homage to Zeit. He later founded the trio Tabo Tago, also self-confessed Dream-catchers. Reuter produces this, wherein four lengthy hypnotic pulses (no analogue gear was used) try to mess with the fabric of time. Wöstheinrich’s youth in the isolated North Rhine Westphalia area informs its themes of “home” and coming full circle. It’s hard to judge this glistening, nagging-yet-narcotic music against that of its forefathers: it’s a labour of love which rarely strains or huffs and puffs and is expertly gauged, with Teutonic efficiency.