Liberation Von History

text

As Wechsel Garland's (Jörg Follert in real life) amazing self-titled album was my last year's favorite, it was (besides being, as ever, potentially advantageous) hard to suppress expectations. Luckily though, my caution proved to be quite redundant this time.

What distinguishes 'Liberation Von History' from 'Wechsel Garland' is the sweeping soundtrack-like character of arrangements and melody. WG is still superb in staging the electroacoustic scenes, generally known as tracks, only they are epic this time. Also new are the elements of dub and the overall restrained genre-play in the second half of the album.

At the same time, it's obvious that 'Wechsel Garland' was a more homogenous record and to be honest, I miss that here. A straightforward soundtrack-style "easy listening" (or how would you call it) album - i.e. side 1 of the record, and 'Steps' from side 2 - would have probably resulted in Wechsel Garland being my this year's favorite again. Oh well... and when one starts to recollect, one might probably miss the peculiar air of minimalist seclusion (which hung around the tracks of 'Wechsel Garland') as well. But not me - I would have undoubtedly preferred a new stylistic approach this time, so the epic imagery served just perfectly. Plus, completely apart from all this elegiac, 'Liberation Von History' is an invaluable addition to the emotional and generic scope of Garland's style, and generally something I enjoyed almost as much as 'Wechsel Garland'.