Apart

Album review

This double CD from Schütze maintains the high standards of previous releases, with one disc tending toward a kind of delicate techno jazz, and the other moving into a twilight ambient world of slow-motion musical gestures and elusive melodic fragments. Schütze's prior experience as a film composer serves him well; he is a master at creating moods, and rather exceptional in his use of musical resources, refusing to limit himself to a particular instrumental palette or style. On the more ambient disc of the two, one of the four pieces is firmly in the Brian Eno/Steve Roach mode (and as lovely as anything produced by those two artists), while another piece is much closer to the industrial genre, with an austere combination of both organic and machine-like drones, and delicate, random chime tones with occasional clicking sounds. The best track on this disc, though, invokes contemporary classical composer Morton Feldman in its glacially evolving chorus of atonal horns, sounding like some obscure and subtle ritual of an advanced, post-industrial culture. The first disc contains similar treasures, with several pieces featuring vibraphones (a favorite Schütze timbre), delicate brush work on cymbals, and a gently rhythmic bassline. The result is a delicate, drifting chamber jazz which both soothes and charms with its quiet sense of mystery.

© Bill Tilland /TiVo