‘Decay’ is indisputably a Berlin techno record – but as the rolling mountains on Phillip Sollman’s cover show, it wasn’t the only place where his third album was constructed. For among the city-based noises that we hear there is a meditative quality that often spills over into pure musical hypnosis, borne out in tracks such as ‘Transducer’ and ‘Solaris’, which hits a running groove. To these spells cast in sound Sollman adds some offbeat vocal samples, such as for the memorable opener ‘Some Kind Of Up And Down Yes’, where a disembodied voice asks ‘When you appear before audiences do you ever wear less than you are wearing now?’, and the closing ‘Ohara’, where the odd vocal talks about ‘touching music with my fingers’. Sollman has done just that – presenting a record that falls into a curious space between the conscious and the unconscious. Crucially, there are some cracking beats in place too!
5 out of 5
Reviewed By Ben hogwood
