One of the drawbacks of Glitchy electronica is that , all too often, albums stay locked within a single groove or atmosphere.
Whether by accident or design, this double CD's worth of ambient IDM doesn't fall into this trap. Perhaps it helps that it wasn't conceived as a completely integrated work.
The German duo - David Rotter and Rafael Milatz - have collected work from their hard drives produced between 2002-2006; tracks which have been gathering whatever the digital equivalent of dust is.
On the sleeve notes they write: "these come from a time of raw creativity when we did not have any concepts about sound engineering or musical genres".
The duo's official debut album, also on Tympanik, was 2008's Rise; a sleek and accomplished piece of work but I actually prefer the 'rawness' of these eighteen new/old tracks.
They range from pieces like A Taste Of Your Future, which is driven by a techno beat, to the more chilled title track where plucked strings and flute add to the gentle synthesized waves.
A brief summary of four consecutive tracks from CD 1 will give an idea of the other kinds of shape-shifting you can hear.
Pop Realtà begins with nice rhythmic Arabesque before a drum beat kicks and we hear a sample of man speaking Italian in a voice that sounds serious enough to be a prayer.
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Work With The Mind is reminiscent of Orbital's soundtrack for The Beach with a American voice lecturing on how the mind can play tricks "the way we perceive things is not the way things really exist"
Waiting has a darker ambient texture with a ghostly voice saying "there is no peace" adding to the sinister mood.
Synthie Raga has, as the title suggests, an Indian flavour with a nice mix of synth and tabla.
In each of these, and on the album as the whole, well chosen samples and acoustic and/or orchestral instrumentation bring an emotional dimension to the synthetic sound.
Integral may have gone back in time to unearth these tracks but it certainly doesn't feel like a stopgap album; more a case of what the Germans might call "vorspung durch technik".
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