‘Kenya meets Kratronics’ is how the press release bills this album, a document of what happened after Stefan Schneider and Sven Kacirek had visited the African country for a considerable length of time. They took their impressions of the country and revealed them in electronic form, so that the musical language is a similar but the sounds are different. There is some very subtle programming at work here, most of it percussive, but it gradually casts a spell in the way that tribal music can do. These are atmospheres rather than tunes, and as such ‘Birds, Bell and Sticks’ maintains a watchful presence, while ‘Talwerk’ turns over a nice guitar line throughout. The pair make very clever use of what to our ears might be inconsequential sounds, and the result is an album that is definitely on the dark side but is also strangely comforting and endearing.
4 out of 5
Reviewed by Ben Hogwood
