Scandinavia is the third installment in the four part series. Assembled during the coldest season, it’s an album full of contemplative electronic recordings, created by the use of granular synthesis, obscure delay units and rudimentary looping techniques on magnetic tape. Recorded with a longsighted outlook, Scandinavia features washes of subdued tones and textures as well as melancholic and warm sounding pulses of noise – all characterized by distinctive aquatic features. Steadily flowing, but slowly awakening the album draws frozen remote landscapes ranging from dark, cold and desolated to melting, warm and hope.
Scandinavia opens with a bleak arctic environment in deep hibernation, where echoes of glacial bursts cut the silence. An undulating mass of viscous ambience sends out blurred out signals through the storm. In this inhospitable surrounding of frost and ice slow changes appear. The form of the landscapes alters and the cold air no longer hinders the breathing. Slowly meltwater seeps out underneath thick layers of ice, slowly building up in momentum and space. Layers of hypnotic atmospheres with barely perceptible undercurrents, brooding pulses of bass and tonal patterns lead to the core of the sonic landscape. Gently radiant layers of light and soil emerge and aquatic echoes expose new paths. The water is harnessed. Preparations for a long journey have begun.

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Although Hentschel went through a classical musical education, his compositional techniques are by far not tradional. In fact he does not start with a musical idea, but with searching for suitable sound material. His interest lies in sounds and samples which had been used in a music or film music context before – film audio tracks, soundtracks, music album, internet, sound libraries etc. He estranges this source material in order to create his own sound – hence the name of his debut album. Hentschel‘s interest in polyphonic vocal music from the late middle ages – especially ars nova and trecento – stems from his earlier study of musical science in Vienna and Dresden. For this reason two of his pieces (Florence, Slow-Moving) contain music from this epoch in a processed form.

Hentschel does not consider himself as a composer of contemporary music, but as a multimedia artist. He developed his own audiovisual performance, based on the interplay of light, visuals and fog. Moreover he is supported by live drummer Lukas Baumgart and together him and Hentschel create an energy which can be heard as well as felt. His aim is to take the listener on an hour-long journey which brings him to the limits of what he can bear. This is achieved by extended repetitions and long arcs of suspense rather than sheer volume.

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Drawing on the micro-polyphony of classical modernism and analogue-leaning contemporary electronic music, it’s the finest incarnation yet of an aesthetic that’s both minimal and cinematic: an unhurried, massive tapestry of sound built from minute processes and hidden melodic lines.

The music spools out of Garratt’s mind in the form of extensively screwed up synthesizers, bowed cymbals, liquidated instruments and detuned tape loops. Bounced between effects chains, music software, mixing desks and tape, his materials are then inflated and tampered with, in different venues of a particular significance or suggestive atmosphere.

The results are enigmatic, hypnotic and register a note of mourning. They are mercifully free of the obligatory club references of electronic music that’s destined for a different mood but nonetheless confines itself to bygone ‘post-club’ tropes.

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