Wolfgang Seidel - Friendly Electrons [Karlrecords 114]

Released via the ever growing Karlrecords label on May 17th, 2k24 is "Friendly Electrons", the latest full length electronic album by Wolfgang Seidel, original drummer of the famed German band Ton Steine Scherben as well as friend and musical collaborator of electronic music pioneer Conrad Schnitzler. Over the course of 18 compositions conceived, revisited and x or at least fully completed throughout the pandemic era and a total duration of 71 minutes Seidel draws inspiration from both his own experiences in improvisation, especially with his Buchla synthesizer, and collage techniques oftentimes employed by Schnitzler, staying true to curious electro-acoustic experimentation and the characteristic sound and aesthetics of what could be described as the earliest years of electronic music production with all its playful bleeps and beeps and sometimes alienating spatial elements alongside gnarly and studio shaking sawtooth signals, yet at times gravitating towards skeletal echoes of IDM / Electronica and minimalist Deep Listening Music that's not really to be called Ambient, all driven by an innate curiousity and a will to explore non-repetetive and free-floating non-linear structures within the electronic music realm which also results in partly score'esque, partly retrofuturist pieces like "Organic Music", "ICC Berlin" and the swampy tones of "EMS #1" whilst "Film Noir" or "Streets Of L.A." hark back to Classical score and highly dramatic collage techniques in use throughout the early days of cinematic history, "EMS #2" provides a rare amalgamation of piano-driven DarkJazz and spatial Dark Ambient and the sparkling and enchanted "Organic Music No. 2" even features recognizable echoes of the so-called Kosmische Musik at times just to name a few. Quite a journey, this album is.

Album artwork on Instagram!