Degrees of Amnesia

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Previously known for his work with self-proclaimed "media terrorists" Granular Synthesis, Ulf Langheinrich's first independent release, Degrees of Amnesia, is a confident, controlled examination of isolationist ambience. As opposed to his Granular work, where performance is the focus, Langheinrich intends Degrees of Amnesia to have an enduring psychological power over time: for this work to have a lasting impact through its "sheer density". Well, time will tell, but I can't really fault this release. There is such depth to its sound, its layered opacity draws the listener in - it's truly immersive. Perhaps the most salient biographical information regarding Langheinrich are the first six years of his life. Born in industrial East Germany, he spent his first year in hospital with a life-threatening ear disease which took six years to "correct" itself. Throw together "industrial East Germany" and "fucked inner ear" and you'll get a pretty accurate impression of this music. It often sounds as if the recordings have been made from within said inner ear, the rhythmic tracks echoing the internal roar of pumping blood. Working as a painter in his earlier career seems to have been an influence too. Langheinrich recalls, "in painting I just added very thin coats of paint until the square was almost grey, huge paintings of insistent noise, not made with simple mixed paint but with layers of colour, very rich, very purist." Layers of paint were transformed into layers of sound, as he spent the 80s working with tape recorders, tampering with acoustic instruments and basic electric devices i.e. playing a cello with an electric shaver. Compared to these electro-acoustic experiments, Degrees of Amnesia is extremely electronic. Some tracks here were composed as far back as 1989, though most of it is constructed between 1994 and 1996 and it could easily have fitted on an Isolationism comp. Again, the overall impression is of an internal music, perhaps akin to eM's > 0 < 1 in this sense. A few tracks have a regular rhythm, not unlike a brutalist, grainy take on minimalist techno, but most of the album wraps you in a beautiful, densely-layered, drifting haze, somewhere between organic and electronic.