The End of the Continuum [CD]

Modelbau - The End of the Continuum [CD]

Anybody paying attention to what's been happening at Lumberton Trading Company during recent months should have noticed that Modelbau had a collaborative CD with Bass Communion. Meshing abstract electronics with ambient textures, field recordings and a more electroacoustic setting, Analysis Reveals Nothing of Substance brought together the minds of Frans de Waard and Steven Wilson into a space that proved their own slightly different takes on such music exemplified a unique synergy rich in scope. On The End of the Continuum, however, Frans gathers nine solo compositions effortlessly proving his skills as an artist capable of molding wonderful shapes from sinewy electronic tones, spacey bleeps and bloops, iridescent babbling, penumbral shifts and, ultimately, a minimalist soundbed that perhaps draws from yet sits outside the work of Eliane Radigue, Asmus Tietchens, Brian Eno, Roland Kayn and others. As with other recent Modelbau albums, there's as much emphasis on space, and allowing the sounds to move and assume forms at their own pace, as there is on sonics which might sit comfortably at the edge of the known universe. Everything sits well together and is the result of somebody who, after having spent decades listening to and championing all kinds of weird and wonderful music from the deepest underground crannies and crevices, has a clear idea about what to avoid when realizing his own vision. Each piece is shorter than what's expected of the content on the average album now as well. Somewhat more penetrable than so much similarly-inclined music, this is deep listening given a lift to the point one could drift away for endless days to it. This might even be Modelbau's best album yet. 01. The Forgotten Paradises 02. An Endless Series of Advertisements 03. The Shower of Glass 04. The End of the Continuum 05. A World of Simultaneity 06. The Communications Landscape 07. Terminal 08. Empty Swimming Pools 09. The Television Mausoleum 10. The Last One From Before (Remixed by Steven Wilson of Bass Communion)