Karamika - Karamika (2015)

With Black Merlin man George Thompson and Musiccargo's Gordon Pohl at the controls, you'd expect this eponymous debut album from their Karamika project to be an atmospheric, out-there affair, heavy on hypnotic synthesizers, droning textures and sparse, stretched-out grooves. That's exactly what they deliver, with a range of tracks that verge from beatless and spooky ("Ton 2"), to pulsating and industrial ("Ton 8"), via more robust, upbeat affairs (check, in particular, the hard-wired, proto-techno bump of "Ton 4"). The krautrock influences are clear, but there are also nods to classic ambient, drone, darkwave and, of course, blissful electronica ("Ton 11", one of the standout moments).