About

Sweet minimal house from a master of the style. Robag Wruhme, whose real name is Gabor Schablitzki layers and processes electronic, acoustic and acoustically modelled sounds to create rich and multidimensional tracks that sit somewhere around house, minimal, ambient and pop. This is especially noticeable on tracks like "Advent," "Nata Alma" and "Volta Copy (Ambient Version)," but the whole album is a joy in this respect. Schablitzki's handling of melody and harmony could almost be considered traditional, but it's with that realisation that his trickster instinct kicks in. He'll take what sounds like a car door slamming, warp it, slap a nice plate reverb on it, and call it a snare. "Ago Lades"—a minimal track that lasts 51 seconds, begins fading out after 30, and is one of my favourites here—uses what sounds like coffee cups clinking as percussion. "Iklahx," another highlight, pierces a warm, fuggy atmosphere with sharp Clicks & Cuts-style processing, a move also heard on "Ak-Do 5." Whatever loveliness Schablitzki conjures, rest assured he'll be along to disrupt it very soon.

On Thora Vukk, his last album, Schablitzki weaved in five numbered pieces he labelled "Brücke" (bridge), dark ambient sketches that counterbalanced the sweeter sounds elsewhere. Schablitzki released an album's worth of material, Wuzzelbud FF, a follow-up to his 2004 debut album that expressed the meaner and more banging side of his musical personality. Although some of the tracks on Venq Tolep are apparently up to seven years old, it's almost as though Wuzzelbud FF represented a descent into Schablitzki darker impulses before Venq Tolep arrived as his cleansing redemption.

By the time another toy piano arrives on "Bézique Atout," Schablitzki's reimagining of Oxia's 2006 smash "Domino" that appears towards the album's end, you might be left wishing that he'd allowed just a bit of Wuzzelbud FF's bite to influence this album. The collaboration with Sidsel Endresen and Bugge Wesseltoft that follows is less cutesy (for something more cutesy, see the voicemails of the final track), and it bottles what Schablitzki excels at, and does so frequently here: surprising decisions, enveloping atmospheres and working with a glint in his eye. — (via Resident Advisor)



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Label: Pampa Records
Format: 2x Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: Germany
Released: Jun 7, 2019
Genre: Electronic
Style: House, Techno
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File under: House / Electro / Techno