Perhaps the busiest bugbear in electronic music is expectation. If artists can escape its predictable clutches then they have a head start on all the other goblins too. Nonine label head Me Raabenstein is a chance-taker with sound deployment. Unafraid to hold a silence for a few beats beyond comfort or splotch an austere ambient microgroove with sudden dayglo colours. As the duo Taub the Berliner brings on board Edinburgh ambient artist Harold Nono in the role of accomplice and foil. Both treat the world of electronics as anything but a closed system, either temporally or instrumentally. Tracks like “Chamber Pot” hold the synthetic sounds under the dominant piano lines, gradually building both up onto an equal platform of pulse, echo and modification. “Wild Blue Yonder” plays with space and volume within a minimal framework of sound, surprising the ears with sudden nearby piano strikes while an emotive theme wipes across the farther fields. It’s a recording that seldom plays it safe, and it’s these risks that help avoid any lazy categorizing.Nonine
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