It sometimes takes for someone to come and interfere
with one’s world for this person to clearly envisage
what the next step is. That is pretty much what happened
with this first full length from Hamburg-based Nitrada,
aka Christophe Stoll. Although often a solitary labour
of love, electronic music often benefits from external
interventions. Following a very promising first mini-album
released almost two years ago, already on German label
2.nd Rec, Nitrada returns with We Don’t Know
Why But We Do It, and engages in the process in
human interaction, allowing others to get involved and
alter the natural course of his work.
Hailing from South Germany, Christophe Stoll spent some
time playing drums in a variety of rock bands. After
moving to Hamburg in 2000, Stoll rediscovered his early
love for electronic music, swapping his old Atari for
a state of the art Mac. Claiming equal fascination for
Björk, Dntel,
Fugazi and Blonde Redhead, his music is surprisingly
tamed and melodic, feeding on everyday sounds and experiences
while remaining level-headed and focused. With his first
mini-album, 0+, released in 2002, Stoll established
the foundations for this new album with stunning electronic
soundscapes incorporating acoustic elements developing
around melodic themes all the way through.
Two years on, We Don’t Know Why But We Do
It revisits these themes, expending them to further
reveal Stoll’s sumptuous melodies and meticulous
sonic arrangements. Yet, for this album, he allows for
external inputs to deflect his original scope and let
his creations develop in new directions. With involvement
from Corrado Nuccini, of label mate Giadini Di Mirò,
and Jukka Reverberi on guitars (No. 4 and Fading
Away respectively) and vocal contributions from
Francesco Cantone (The Only Solution and Start
Today), Kaye Brewster (Fading Away) and
Nina Sophie Schwabe (Like A Souvenir), this
album takes a more varied approach than its predecessor.
Due to the various contributors being spread between
Scotland, Germany, Northern Italy and Sicily, Stoll
started by sending rough sketches of tracks, consequently
working on what he got back and incorporating these
elements into his own work. This results in We Don’t
Know Why… scintillating with new textures
and colours. On tracks like Start Today or
Fading Away, the guitars provide some interesting
relief to Stoll’s delicate backgrounds, evolving
into something even more striking on the complex instrumental
No. 4. While Schwabe’s contribution to
Like A Souvenir doesn’t really manage
to satisfy entirely, the song being a tad too simplistic
and predictable, the presence of Kaye Brewster on Fading
Away proves altogether more rewarding and appropriate,
and Cantone provides the opening The Only Solution,
with its austere string work and slow-moving progression,
and closing Start Today, with haunting resonances
as the voice seems like woven into the soundscapes.
On the remaining tracks, Stoll presents some extremely
ambitious constructions, especially on the stunning
Old Love, New Idea, on which he confronts orchestral
formations, complex beats patterns and treated vocals,
and on the crystalline Everything Is Not Alright.
If 0+ promised some interesting developments
on Nitrada’s sound, We Don’t Know Why
But We Do It smashes expectations in many ways,
almost recreating Christophe Stoll’s concept from
scratch. Yet, this first album is not a total departure
and should confidently lure fans of his earlier work
into adopting his more opened and diverse approach.
4.1/5 |
