Similar to the way that Britney Spears sang with a ton of conspicuous innuendo about being a slave to music/dancing, Swiss composer Thomas Fehlmann has just announced a new album on Kompakt where he reportedly “allowed himself to techno.” Artists of all stripes are typically all-too inclined to micro-analyze their work while it’s still in progress, so for the upcoming Los Lagos release — out on all major formats September 7 — Fehlmann made a point to disregard his prying ears and eyes and let the musical snowball roll downhill. Here’s the Berliner elaborating without getting all sweaty in an abandoned warehouse somewhere:
To techno is to deconstruct and rebuild again, to set up an area of tension and lose it in the flow of grooves. It’s magnifying a detail out of proportion, or slowly knitting a texture. I wanted to find a structure that’s surprising, disruptive and rewarding, so I switched off the control and followed my intuition. I’m trying to expand my vocabulary and bring out a new beauty. It’s a complex process of search and destroy.
One figures that Fehlmann can probably afford to let his intuition take the lead, since he’s been making and releasing electronic music for around 30 years now. Los Lagos will be the 7th LP in which his name stands alone among the composer credits, but otherwise, most people know him as one-half (alognside Alex Paterson) of the influential ambient house outfit, The Orb. (And those two might be unofficially competing with Autechre in an endurance test between electronic duos. I guess whoever admits under interrogation to using a non-sampled acoustic guitar…loses?)
Listen to Los Lagos’s track, “Morrislouis,” below and pre-order Los Lagos here.
Los Lagos tracklisting:
01. Löwenzahnzimmer
02. Window
03. Morrislouis
04. Tempelhof (feat. Max Loderbauer)
05. Freiluft
06. Triggerism
07. Neverevernever
08. Geworden
More about: The Orb, Thomas Fehlmann
