Released: 2008
Style: Modern Classical
"Describing the dream-inducing wash of sounds that is 'Inlandish', it is, at first listen, perhaps easy to call it ambient. Roedelius suggests that we should try a bit harder though: 'Ambient doesn't really express 'Inlandish''s complexity and beauty. 'Inlandish' is not easy to put in the category of what ambient music normally appears as in the listeners ears. Perhaps it's 'ambient at its best', but I would think it's a sort of new or contemporary classical music.'
They began the album by spending 10 days together in Story's Toledo studio laying down Roedelius's piano parts ('I'm just the piano-keyboard man,' says Roedelius somewhat disingenuously). After that, Story spent five months working on the tone of the record, adding the haunting twists and languid yet euphoric whooshes. Of the two, Roedelius is usually considered the groundbreaking electronicist but on 'Indlandish' it was Story who added the electronic parts and all the arrangements (Oboe, cello...). The result is an amalgam of pulsing, tinkling, voice-of-the-future sounds that touch on the dreamy and beautiful but also something darker, more melancholy and deeply existential. Says Story: 'Happy music always seems kind of dull and shallow to me, so I'm always drawn back to something with a bit more mystery, darkness or sadness. I'll take Bartok over Shostakovich, Boards Of Canada over Franz Ferdinand.'
This also being the reason for Story 'electronically subverting acoustic instruments like the cello,' or making electronic sounds feel organic, challenging the listener to ask what's what and how it makes them feel. It's something that Story takes from his love of Steve Reich and the great man's use of 'repetition and shifting perspectives.' But however much 'Inlandish' might sound like the soundtrack to a trip through the cosmos, this album is immersive rather than passive, both unsettling and comforting. For Roedelius, though, 'Inlandish' is simply a beautiful album that expresses how much fun the two have had together: 'We took breaks to eat nice food and to drink wine. We were also cooking together. I cooked my special French fish soup, which I learned running an art bar with friends at a beach in Corsica in the '60s. Everything really was as easy and beautiful as 'Inlandish' sounds.'" - Label
Tracklisting:
1 As It Were (5:05)
2 Inlandish (4:25)
3 Trouvé (5:56)
4 Downrivers (4:28)
5 Ripple And Fade (3:17)
6 Rooftree (1:56)
7 Serpentining (5:20)
8 House Of Glances (6:03)
9 The Orchardist (3:07)
10 Riddled (4:29)
11 Beforst (4:14)
12 Intermittent Haiku (1:39)
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