- Lorenz Brunner's latest album returns him—musically, at least—to the forests of Lower Bavaria that inspired his 2013 album, Hinterland. Though Brunner now lives in Berlin, he's once again making music that evokes branches splayed against the moon. This isn't the first time his output has seemed to loop back on itself. His last album, Placid, revisited the elegiac 303s of his 2012 full-length debut, On Acid. But what's really characterised his records has been their melancholy and slightly portentous atmosphere, summed up by the name of Brunner's label, Plangent. This mood hangs heavy over Daemmerlicht.
Another defining feature of his style, as he put it in an RA Exchange, is the balance between the "physical" and "cerebral." Daemmerlicht tips him towards the latter. Swathes of this album pass by with barely a beat at all, much of the percussion sounding like rustles in the undergrowth or distant thunder. When a rhythm does emerge, it has more in common with instrumental hip-hop than the melodic techno of 2014's Iffy album on Innervisions. Brunner seems more concerned with spinning a narrative for the mind's eye, and there are hints of a plot in titles such as "Durch Den Hohlweg" ("Through The Ravine") and "Am Tag Danach" ("The Day After"). There's slow-burning drama in the orchestral strings of "Von Der Kanzel." The elongated drones in tracks like "Der Steinmetz" have a symphonic dimension as well, conjuring images of mists parting to reveal crumbling Gothic castles.
These attempts to instil intrigue do highlight another tension—even contradiction—in his music. Brunner has talked about his desire for "directness" in his productions, yet his alias and album titles like Hinterland and Daemmerlicht—meaning half-light—dwell on the enigmatic or liminal. In practice, the album's sense of mystery is often conveyed in obvious ways: all those sonorous tones, eerie flutes and soft chimes occasionally sound as clichéd as someone telling a ghost story with a torch held under their chin. Though this shift towards classical is a fresh direction for Brunner in some ways, it also sounds much like you'd expect of a neoclassical album by Recondite. Still, it's worth going down into the woods with him—so long as you're not after any big surprises.
Tracklist01. Daemmerlicht
02. Durch Den Hohlweg
03. Lichtung
04. Hoehlenlichter
05. Der Steinmetz
06. Von Der Kanzel
07. Am Tag Danach
08. Im Holz
09. Im Regen
10. Am Sonntag
11. Unten
12. Immer Da