Eisblumen

Eisblumen

Track Listings

1. 2012

2. Eisblulmen

3. Tannenwald

4. Abendrot

5. November

6. Wake Up With the Rain

7. Girl from Uzbekistan

8. Nuclear Island

9. Night vs. Day

10. Hermitage

11. Snowgum

Tracks:

2012
Eisblulmen
Tannenwald
Abendrot
November
Wake Up With the Rain
Girl from Uzbekistan
Nuclear Island
Night vs. Day
Hermitage
Snowgum

Customer Reviews:

MARK TEPPO's igloomag.com REVIEW.......2006-02-03

MARK TEPPO's igloomag.com REVIEW :: (01.09.06)
(KRYSTIAN SHEK :: Eisblumen CD) The PS sub-label is generally reserved for releases which are done by artists other than Namlook (as compared to the PK sub-label which is strictly his work and his regular collaborators and the PW sub-label which generally pairs him off with a collaborator who isn't necessarily based in Germany -- the above mentioned collaboration with Burhan Öçal, for example). For a number of years, the PS sub-label (notice the difference in the logo in the upper right hand corner of the cover) lay fallow as the regulars of this subdivision (Jochem Paap, Wolfgang Spyra, Tetsu Inoue, Atomtm to name a few) found themselves drifting off to other labels. Recently, there has been a rekindling of the fires over here with an influx of new blood. One of which is Krystian Shek's Eisblumen record.

A reflection of Shek's wintertime journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg, Eisblumen is an environmental ambient trance journey from within the heart of the new Russian electronic movement. Reminiscent of winter in the same way that Peter Benisch's Waiting For Snow was, Eisblumen flirts with techno beats and breathy glitch while dropping dappled lines of space music melodies as if recreating the early 80s era of synthesizer music over a throbbing bed of peripheral BPM. "Tannenwald" throbs with that techno pulse, a Ken Ishii style persistence that sticks in the back of your throat, but keeps it all at arm's length, pushing the beats towards minimalism but keeping them close enough to warm your blood. The beats shuffle a bit in "Abendrot," playing counterpoint to a chiming synthesizer melody of slow sparks like the cold light off a winter landscape. "November" bristles with freezing temperatures, leaving a bit of brittle snap on the beats, while "Wake Up With The Rain" hiccups and gurgles like water in old pipes that is sluggishly moving behind the walls. Beats patter and ring against the windowpane like the temperamental winter rain which isn't so frozen to be snow but is still cold enough to rattle hard against the glass.

One of my favorites, "The Girl From Uzbekistan," begins with bird song and the ripple of water -- a brief flash of spring within the icy confines of Eisblumen as if the sight of this girl generates such a rush of warm that the birds come back. "The Girl From Uzbekistan" builds Kompakt-style from small elements -- little bits of glitch and hiccups of sound -- into a seamless structure of light and grace, filled with pulsating rhythm and recurrent motifs. Right at the heart of the song, it all drops away into a moment sustained choral hum and, just for a second, you can hear the birds again. Then: the rhythms return, squiggling and churning like the kaleidoscopic motion of thousand prisms.

"Nuclear Island" whispers with the magnetic ghosts of lost tape loops and the night-time cry of radiated blackbirds and dissolves into an neu-organic ambience that sounds like the steam-driven breath of old machinery and tired air circulation systems. Shek populates this ambience with more of the bird cries, a hint of radio transmissions and a phantasmal glitch beat. This ambient wasteland segues into "Night vs Day" which picks up the last train out of town, riding hard rails away from the desolate ghost town of irradiated machinery back towards civilization where the persistent techno beats live.

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