With most music nowadays released disposably on streaming services, this Edinburgh act instead opt for a high concept album, on a heavy-duty memory stick and CD with artwork and videos to match.
For all that, its 15 slices of electronica are surprisingly accessible. Synths meld with chiming guitars, a little like countrymates Mogwai, or Arab Strap – but it’s purely instrumental fare aside from the odd sample of a distorted spoken passage in some eastern European language. Opener ‘On Darker Days’ echoes one of the Strap’s titles but is less gloomy and more glitchy, perhaps like Aphex Twin in less ‘eclectic’ mode.
The Germans are acknowledged as masters of electronic music but despite the name Neu Gestalt sound closer to home, with echoes of another countrymate, Boards of Canada. The more ambient ‘Restless Universe’, and ‘Another Rogue Satellite’ could soundtrack a film about space flight, unsurprisingly. In fact, all the titles do what they suggest, ‘Flickering Diodes’ tinkling away beautifully; ‘From The Ice Blue Stars’ conjuring up more images of the dark great beyond. One to meditate to.
This article originally appeared in the Blackpool Gazette.
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