Klangwart - Transit (2015)

For 18 years now, the electronic duo Klangwart have self-confidently occupied their very own niche between avant-garde and pop. Markus Detmer and Timo Reuber, the two "elder statesmen" of neo-Krautrock, have since become regarded as the most authentic heirs to the psychedelic sound gurus of the '70s. Titled Transit, their new album after Sommer (STAUB 099CD) is a real masterpiece: nine tracks of otherworldly beauty -- energetic, organic, unpredictable. Thousands of sound-snippets are assembled into a kind of vegetative music. Pulsing beats interact with weightless, floating sounds. Everything is in a constant flow -- sometimes in slow-motion, other times at a tearing pace. Transit stays at any time highly concentrated and dense. The longest track clocks in at only five minutes -- unusual for Klangwart. The production by sound guru Joseph Suchy appears almost three-dimensional, whereupon space is an equal element of composition. That's cosmic music for the 21st century.