Over the last ten years a strange mycelium was sprouting from the ground of Germany's sound topography, going widely unnoticed while creeping its way up through the corpse of the ubiquitous "neo-kraut", "diskurs-pop", and the like. This is a small underground network of artists and projects with poetic, mysterious names such as Brannten Schnüre, Baldruin, Kirschstein, Freundliche Kreisel, and Balint Brösel. Operating in the margins and intersections of folklore, experimental electronics, dreams, and nightmares, the Gespensterland LP archives and compiles their magic works for the very first time and already today it stands as a contemporary testament with an auratic presence comparable to that of Pordenone / Great Complotto.
"... For as much as these bands differ in their respective sonic approach, Gespensterland can still be considered as a cipher for a shared cosmos and a mutually found aesthetic language. It is always a similar sentiment of a slightly disconnected, shifted and delayed reality that manifests itself in Brannten Schnüre's wistful and whimsical ambient-folk loops, the evocative and rhythmic poltergeist interludes of Baldruin, the sweet and naïve C86-jangle of Balint Brösel, Kirschstein's rhenish mutant-NDW and post-kraut-romanticism and the electro-acoustic séances of Freundliche Kreisel. Think of it as a rampant yearning, a manic laughter, but mostly as a feeling of some somnambulistic thirst for adventure and journeys into the unknown, a feeling that is grounded deep inside the heart of the continent. We imagine, this is the music of a few like-minded recluses, sitting alone at night in their chambers, immersing themselves in the darkest and innermost Tibet of their own work. It's not too far-fetched either to read Gespensterland as a contribution to a specifically German response to Mark Fisher's hauntologic theories. In every track, the fancy of an abandoned future uncoils a narrative thread that has long been discontinued, a dream vision that remained unredeemed forever, now haunting the dull grey corridors of the post-historic presence. These songs glimmer and shine with moods and stories that draw their tension from the same force fields that once gave rise to Alfred Kubin's demonic visions, Hans Henny Jahnn's nightmarish 'Night of Lead' or the bizarre adventures of Baron Muenchhausen. And yet, it is not the specters of the past that are being summoned or dealt with here, but instead the quotidian, perpetually recurring disintegration of reality that lies within the close encounter with one's own unfamiliarity: 'is this my hand, or is it someone else's?'-- Margot Benetti, Walpurgis 2023
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