B. FLEISCHMANN
Angst Is Not A Weltanschauung!
MORR085
Morr Music 2008
09 Tracks. 54mins48secs

Bernhard Fleischmann’s habitually dark electronic textures and minor key harmonics luxuriate in fresh, expansive grooves on Angst Is Not A Weltanschauung!, his most explicitly pop album yet.  An embryonic indie rock quality is whipped into shape on a number of pieces by stuttering drum machine hi-hats and cockily affirmative vocal twists.  At times the accessible minor key phrases evoke the grinding of large bodies and come off rather well.  The brooding, sexy male-female vocalizing of Last Time We Met At A T&tt Concert, for one, entwines effortlessly with a cavernous, tub thumping rhythm. Such spells of song eventually incur moments of implosion, after which Fleischmann’s quieter, softer side reawakens, and on pieces such as In Trains, spur on swathes of organ, misshapen electronic pulses and greyscale atmospherics.

A new wrinkle in the proceedings, a few blue notes and smoky jazz licks now slip in between the syntax and decay of old.  If not gimmicky or naive, at times it does sound far from being painstakingly assembled.  Fleischmann’s harmonic sensibility graces the closing track, Even Your Glasses Miss Your Eyes, and burns off some of the consequent frustration.  The piece, as with many of his best, is glued together by little more than mood, modality and relentless repetition.  Oneiric yearning remains, then, but in places Fleischmann retraces his steps and doesn’t appear to know where to turn next.

3/5

B. Fleischmann | Morr Music
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