Ambient

In this album, Markus Reuter appears as a born shaper of oneiric Ambient, slow and not lacking in melody. As if it were a sort of modern alchemist, he mixes textures of sound and chords in atypical ways, producing unexpected combinations, which give his music a great personality. The tracks flow along different registers and gradings. Some are cosmic and crystaline. Others turn out to be mysterious.

Edgar Kogler (www.amazings.com)

There is a distinctly cinematic quality to the pieces that make up Markus Reuter’s excellent work, Trepanation. Each track has a character all its own and creates a strong, layered mental image through sound—fully realized scenes in search of their visuals yet existing perfectly without them. Reuter glides along his music’s narrative path from dark to light, beginning with the hammer-fall piano of “The Key to Conscience” and culminating in the meditative grace of “Number of the Mind.” Along the way, Reuter easily blends deft musicianship and a range of instrumentation with environmental and displaced sounds—children’s laughter, distant conversations, or the darkly authoritarian voice giving wordless commands in the slightly disturbing “Preparation.” His layers are thick and elegantly constructed; in any given moment there are a good number of things going on sonically, all demanding attention and all quite worthy of it. Reuter’s at his best here in “3 to 4 Days Before the Echo,” an immersive, stunning 15-minute piece that pairs deep-space swirls with savage, sudden punches of percussion to superb dramatic effect; “Beat,” which slips in with calming, muted vibraphone-style tones and an easy rhythm; and the aforementioned “Number of the Mind,” a spiritual and mental balm that moves along slowly to bring this superb listening experience to a refreshing close.

hypnagogue.netfirms.com

Markus Reuter has become known for the brainy, brooding and atmospheric ambient music he creates using a touch guitar, a metal stringed guitar-like instrument designed for two-handed playing and extended sound generation. His musicianship moves beyond the virtuosic with the addition of several layers of echo, reverb, pitch shifting, long and short delay lines and other forms of digital processing. On Trepanation (79'33"), Reuter asks the often missed yet most basic question, what kind of music can be made using this gear? The result is a confluence of processes, intuition and innovation. Perhaps his recent re-imagining of loop music comes by way of collaborations with the likes of Bernhard Wostheinrich and Ian Boddy. Their works with Reuter are more about improvisation and turning sound inside out than floating textures and breathing washes of sound - as on Reuter's earlier releases. On this album, Reuter creates a truly unique dream-like mood. The 8 tracks are reminiscent of the sleeping mind as they wander unconsciously from theme to theme in a free association of half-thoughts, lost memories and forgotten places. Each composition eventually settles into its own odd ambient area. Characterized by the reiteration of extended phrases and weighted by unpredictable shifts in timbre, Reuter's work is in some ways minimalistic. But the primary force shaping Trepanation is Reuter's bold creativity and technical skill as he effectively combines the ethereal with the surreal.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END

Was für eine klare, bewusste und gleichsam bewusstseinserweiternde psychosomatische Klangreise! Reuters, der auch in den Bereichen Songwriting, Klangdesign und Performance-Art aktiv ist und algorythmische Komposition für verschiedene Stile wie Ambient, Pop oder Heavy Rock anwendet, beweist hier hohes Gespür für die Erzeugung von intensiven Soundscapes. Sein mittlerweile 6. Soloalbum, als reines Gitarre-Laptop-Album entstanden, überzeugt durch den faszinierend konstanten Fluss aus dunklen Drone-artigen Stimmungen, die latent rythmisch pulsieren, und hellen Atmosphären. Trepanation hieß in der antiken Medizin, ein Stück des Schädels zu öffnen, um den Druck des Hirns herauszulassen. Reuter schafft dies mit ungleich unbrutaleren Mitteln - ein außergewöhnliches Ambientalbum!

www.terz.org

As much as I like ambient and electronic music, it can all start sounding the same after a while. So it is really refreshing when an album like Markus Reuter’s Trepanation comes along to challenge preconceptions of what this genre is all about. “The Key to Conscience” defies easy categorization, with its quirky start-and-stop motion, the sounds sort of pinging in and out of the mix. It is restless and unsettled, yet there is smoothness as well. “Preparation” has an interesting vocal sample that repeats on occasion, surrounded by negligible yet dramatic music, moving forward as if on tiptoe in the dark. The interestingly named “3-4 Days Before the Echo” has a quirkier style similar to the first track, the music behaving at times as if it has been sliced up and spliced back together. But again, for all the restlessness there is grace also. The echoes grow and become more insistent, then slowly fade away as we near the end of almost 17 minutes of captivating musical meanderings. Unusual field recordings hang in the background of “No Part of Me Could Summon a Voice,” from children’s voices to something like typing on an old manual typewriter. High-pitched glassy electronic tones complete the minimal package. The surreal sounds of Reuter’s Warr guitar appear throughout, but are particularly noticeable on “A Prospect that is Simple,” a drifting ethereal piece. Listening to “Beat,” I marvel at its simplicity while being strikingly original, as I do throughout Trepanation. Inventive and invigorating.

Phil Derby / Electroambient Space