From this album's title and the sepia image of a solitary tree that graces its cover, you might assume Dirk Geiger draws the bulk of his inspiration from his natural surroundings.
If the world of nature was indeed his chief point of reference, and the opening two tracks at least suggest that it was, he is clearly not one to view it in isolation from the more mechanised and man-made urban environment.
Track names like Botanic Garden and Winter Senses are red herrings in that the ambient-glitch rhythms do not strike you as homages to exotic plants or snowy landscapes .
With Gewitterregen, however, the record opens with the sound of thunder leading into a lyrical piano refrain similar to Sondheim's Send In The Clowns. This is followed by the gentle pulse of the title track, which is reminiscent of the luminous atmosphere created by Fennesz on Venice.
It is the third tune that spikes this relative calm. On Noise Format, the beats seem to be competing with a badly tuned radio and this prepares the listener for other tracks where field recordings of traffic noise, or the muted babble of voices punctuate synthetic beats. By the end, any idealistic thoughts of harmony with the natural world are all but forgotten.
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Geiger, from Tübingen in Germany, is at his best when assembling sound collages which are abstract and introspective. Tracks dominated by more conventional rhythmic patterns are nowhere near as absorbing.
On Botanic Garden and Overhead Projection, for example, the repetitive structure and unvarying percussion becomes a little tedious. The latter works better in the more dubstep-orientated makeover by Access To Arasaka; one of two remixes (the other is by Svart1).
Geiger's past as a techno DJ is evident in tracks like Minus 10 and Itch Glitch but ,taken as the whole, the album has a spectral, even desolate atmosphere.
The result is a chilled, but no mean chilly record and, as such, a soundtrack more suited to deep thinkers than dance addicts.
Dirk Geiger online
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