Grandbrothers

Incidental minimalism.

Instrumental transcendental cross-cultural neo-classicism.

Transnational trance-dances.

Mellow-dramatic cinematic ambience.

Historical futurism.

House-Bricolage

Musique Discrete

These are just ‘some’ shorthand ways to describe this new album (the third following 2015’s ‘Dilation’ and 2017’s ‘Open’) from Turkish-German (Erol Sarp) and Swiss (Lukas Vogel) duo Grandbrothers.

Other ways requires further connotative (con)text and diligent denotative description. Therefore …

Based around Sarp’s mournful, melancholic, elegiac, euphoric piano sounds Vogel has added electro-flourishes and techno-touches.

Fragments of the past collide with segments of the present.

Wordless wonderings, (meta)physical ponderings, herdless wanderings, this is a mind-freeing mentally-unplugging dérive (a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances) that traverses the inner/outer frames of perception.

Subjective interpretations are contained within.

‘Howth’ is an Eastern-echo that (re)traces the roots and routes taken. And the paths crossed.

‘What we see’ is a Teuto-tronic Jan Hammer/Harold Faltermeyer-like cinematic carousel.

‘All the unknown’ is a multi-layered block-building surround-sound-structure and the shimmering motorik of ‘Unrest’ with both recalling the paranoiac-panic of Orbital’s ‘The Box’.

The astral-pastoral ‘Auberge’ is a cosmos-carousing trip through the light fantastic, an elemental excursion across space and/or time. In these times of enforced atomisation the opportunity to ‘travel’ existentially is essential.

Crystalline and pristine, this is new-age music for both the exhaustion of the End Times we’re currently enduring and experiencing yet also the nourishing oncoming optimism of New Beginnings.

Gotta have some hope … haven’t you?