TAUMEL – Now We Stay Forever Lost In Space Together (2022, LP/CD Tonzonen Records)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Tonzonen Records

Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, Gatefold, + Download Code, 300 copies

Format: CD, Album, Digipack, 500 copies

Release Date: 18 Feb 2022

Taumel is the music formation comprising Sven Pollkötter and Jakob Diehl, based in Rheda Wiedenbrück, Germany. The sound is drums, guitar, piano/keys, voice, and electronics, but depending on the project it is reduced or extended by additional musicians. Taumel does not distinguish convention from experiment. Composition and concept stand side by side with free improvisation and chaos (info from Bandcamp).

Let’s have a look at Tonzonen Records’ press release:

“NOW WE STAY FOREVER LOST IN SPACE TOGETHER is after THERE IS NO TIME TO RUN AWAY FROM HERE the 2nd part of the musical series T R A U M. This musical series is characterized by its slow tempi and the instrumental quartet instrumentation trumpet/flugelhorn, electric guitar, piano/Rhodes, and drums. As in the first part of this series (TRAUM I), the individual (again five) track titles form the album title. At the same time, this sentence refers to the first part in terms of content, or rather the ‘narrative’ is continued – whereby the faulty sentence structure shows that a poetization is being pushed forward, which is in a sense programmatic. The apparent uniformity gives way to a slowly progressive change and mutation. Each album in this series is like a movement of a larger form that has yet to be ultimately determined. What is certain is that a certain uniformity is juxtaposed with increasing change. The surrealistic world of T R A U M shimmers between utopia and dystopia and expands its musical material to a noticeable symphonic claim, even if the music always remains anchored in minimalism at the same time. Stylistic classification is basically difficult because this also always reveals walls and borders that ‘taumel’ does not see. Nevertheless, some music styles/genres are mentioned in order to promote an inevitable naming of this music: Minimal, Ambient, Psychedelic, Jazz, Blues, Rock, Metal, Doom, Surrealism, Kraut, Instrumental…are mentioned here as influences”…

The 39min album “Now We Stay Forever Lost In Space Together” consists of just 5 tracks clock ticking from 4:33min to 12:14min, and if you check carefully then you’ll see that all the titles of the songs are referred to as the title of the album! The opener “Now” starts under a relaxing serene but dark soundscape while slowly the electric guitar leads the tune into a Space path with a lot of ‘Spacey-effects’, the scenery becomes extra-mysterious, remaining in this dark corridor that abruptly leads to the second track “We Stay”, emerging a dark cold and kind of isolated feeling, while the band openly experiments with Space and Time, the music obtains an ambient improvisational cinematic complexion flirting with the Avant-Garde, revealing a quite funereal rhythm/scenery… A complete change of the ‘scenery’ comes with “Forever”, a smooth, soft, and dark jazzy atmosphere with a ‘sad’ trumpet sound that fills the air with nothing else than surrealistic magic… The mourning funeral trumpet sound is here at the beginning of “Lost In Space”, the soundscape is so strangely lugubrious, slowly but progressively becomes spacey, darker, slower, acting as a musical elegy, improvised and quite experimental! The last track is called “Together”, a song that uses the same dark, cold, isolated path, while weird sounds are blended with a sad and very emotional trumpet sounding, it seems that the weirdest and the saddest the sound is, the more delicate becomes! Super cool! “Now We Stay Forever Lost In Space Together” is a very difficult album but very touching, thrilling, and Jazz-ish! You will not be disappointed! TimeLord Michalis

Tracklist