Schweben - Sketches Of Plains (2019)

Throughout the works of Philipp Hager, the person behind SCHWEBEN, there’s this feeling of music practiced as some sort of geographical study. With his band ZEMENT, he’s exploring the possibibilites within the seismic textures of the classic Hallogallo-Maschinen-Beat, trying to work himself through layers of similar structures and minimal changes between his guitar and synths and Christian Büdel’s ritual drumming, ever moving further into the rhythmic realms of proto techno with the means of rock. Here, the name „ZEMENT“ evokes something as heavy, hard and constructed as it is pulverized and highly formable into any desired shape.

SCHWEBEN, in a name-telling contrast, functions like aerial photographies of said structures. Here, Hager observes musical themes from a distance; not unlike a drone flight over a plateau, the tracks on „Sketches Of Plains“ are uncongested, light, dizzyingly flurry. Examining ideas solely with a synth (and casual help from a sampler), he takes Zement’s repetitional approach in a different direction, fumbling around on a fundament of carefully built sequencer melodies, erasing all traces of rock, leaving the listener with sceletal rhythms and minimalistic melodies mimicking natural phenomena.

From the titles to the song structures, this album invokes hot, breezy air (and, on a more personal note, we first heard the rough mixes of „Sketches Of Plains“ during the summer of 2018 and within two listening sessions, that one turned into our favourite summer album). In their sketchiness, the tracks are as sparse as the plains they’re named after, yet they are ripe with faux virtual nature sounds, nods to 1980’s japanese minimalism filtered through acid house, echoes of second-wave synth experimentalists like portuguese Telectu, or artists like DSR Lines, and, as the title of the album suggests, a hats-off to Miles Davis‘ „Sketches Of Spain“: „The softer you play it, the stronger it gets.“