Esperanza

VINYL FORMAT. Vinyl version features four hand-picked bonus tracks! "Michael Rother is probably not a name that floats to the top when one is questioned about influential musicians. This is an injustice. Rother's effect on ambient, techno, house, acid jazz, and space music is enormous. If you listen you will hear the echoes of Rother's early works in the recordings of the Chemical Brothers, Andreas Vollenweider, Vangelis and Dead Can Dance. Rother, who first gained notoriety with an early Kraftwerk line-up, really made his bones with the band Neu!. Here Rother graces us with his eighth solo album, his first release in nearly a decade. As can be expected when the words "music" and "Kraftwerk" are spoken in the same sentence, we are speaking here about an artistic creation that is totally synthetic. The music is electronic, minimalist, hypnotic and just a bit alien. Fortunately, all of these adjectives can be quite positive when they are used to describe the music of Michael Rother.

So, what does Mr. Rother's newest release sound like? Track One, Side One, "Silver Sands," pretty much gives a taste of the whole. The piece is squeaky clean with none of the annoying analog euphony, recording venue air, captured space or performance hall reverberation. Everything is created, manipulated, layered and sculpted. This is not to say it does not "sound good" - it does. It has deep bass, complex personality and a huge soundstage. It just does not sound "real" - and it shouldn't. "Kristall" is a perfect cut for a radio show like Hearts of Space. It is the sonic equivalent of computerized virtual reality. Rother builds a musical canvas of repetitive loop, and then splashes spacey synthesizer exclamations in the most carefully chosen places. With meticulous control, Rother plays every instrument and extracts precisely the colors he wants from within the machine's dark soul of chips, capacitors and resistors. If you like space music or ambient music I am sure you will find Esperanza a worthy addition to your collection." - Ultimate Audio