Quiet gusts of air rattle the window outside against a cloudy sky - loud hissing of driving wind swells from the loudspeakers at home. With the new release on Spheredelic we bring the dark nostalgic mood of autumn directly to your ears!

Extremely distorted, synthetic soundscapes weave around the elegantly floating sound of an echoing electric guitar like glue dried into threads. Again and again, the organic resonance of the strings pervades the sticky, buzzing noise soundscapes, only to subside plaintively and drown in the digital flickering of the manipulated samples. RETOUR 4 sounds like sticking your head out of the window in the moving carriage of the Trans-Siberian railway, while the in-ear plugs blow out of your ears and the post-punk guitars you just heard are only a fissured auditory fragment of themselves in the mud of the headwind. The association with a train journey is not far-fetched, but rather programmatic.

For the new release DEHORS by Quatrefoil on Spheredelic is inspired precisely by this. From the echoing breeze in abandoned depots, the quiet darkness of empty night train compartments or the transitory character of the roaring and humming of passing freight trains in the sheer expanse of the landscape.

The various tracks of the new release by the Croatian ambient/experimental project Quatrefoil sound as changeable as a train journey, as different, but nevertheless equally dark and challenging. Dark, sometimes sub-bass, sometimes treble-heavy sample-based drone surfaces pervade the stereo image, while a deep, distorted piano swells promisingly and gracefully and provides for embalmed lower mids (DêPART 2).

 In between, again and again: skilfully placed, rail traffic-based field recordings, the rumble, rattle and clicking of passing trains, the tinnitus-like flicker and squeak of a rail against which we put our ear (DêPART 8 & RETOUR 5). Sometimes it seems as if the mechanical throbbing of a machine from the other end of the tunnel is cutting gracefully but firmly through the air (vapeur), sometimes the sound seems almost sacred, as if we were in a scene from a Werner Herzog film set to music by Popol Vuh (DêPART 6).

 But what makes these cathedral-like halls, the deep surfaces of sonorous bass voices (DêPART 1) and the distorted, shrill walls of manipulated samples so distinguishable and appealing compared to conventional ambient is precisely this omnipresent, entertaining twitching of a field recording close to rail transport in combination with skilfully used instrumental elements.

The songs also leave metaphorically legible traces in our consciousness: after all, we humans draw our little lines in spacetime like passing trains every day - or leave fine vapours in the data smog. A nice side fact: the coordinates of the field recordings complement the track titles. So you are not only aurally embedded in industrial, yet organic sound surfaces, but can also inwardly transport yourself to the passing expanses of the Croatian landscape.

 Fans of experimental and above all programmatic ambient soundscapes will get fully satisfied with DEHORS. Have a good trip!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Text: R. Ahrens

Here is the download