Walls

Import! Walls is the fifth full-length album for Apparat, aka Berlin's Sascha Ring, who had one hell of a year 2006. His collaboration with Ellen Allien, the critically-acclaimed album Orchestra of Bubbles, forged electrifying new connections between techno, electro and pop music. Somewhere in between all the laud and acclaim and touring, he managed to record his first solo studio album since 2003's Duplex. Despite its title, Walls isn't about dividing lines. Instead, it describes a circle that pulls many elements together into a protected, enclosed space where they jostle and roam free: strings and mallet instruments; rock guitar and gravelly sawtooth synths; stuttering digital percussion and muscular studio drumming. What might be most striking about Walls is the way it creates a kind of single, sustained mood -- this is an album for listening to all in one go, front to back.