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CD
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KOMPPA 002CD
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Meticulously curated by Wolfgang Voigt, the Pop Ambient compilation series (and its latest offspring, the Pop Ambient artist album series) has long catered to a unique aesthetic sitting somewhere between experimental field recordings, no-age music, and synth pop -- a proud tradition carried on by Thore Pfeiffer's full-length debut Im Blickfeld. After inaugurating its Pop Ambient artist album series with Leandro Fresco's stellar 2015 full-length El Reino Invisible (KOMPPA 001CD/LP), Kompakt presents the next installment by up-and-coming soundsmith Thore Pfeiffer. The young German producer turned heads with two excellent contributions to Kompakt's Pop Ambient 2015 compilation (KOMP 120CD/KOM 315LP), and he showcases the full breadth of his remarkable talent on Im Blickfeld. Successfully carving out his very own niche on crowded terrain, he doesn't seem too interested in merely repeating the established achievements of the genre, but finds a personal approach to electronic enchantment. From the hot-wired micro-loops of enigmatic opener "Allzu Nah" to the cut-up folk of the title-track, the neon-tinged romance of "Was Ihr Wollt," or the mock balearisms of "Kolibri," Pfeiffer seems to be less interested in watering down the rough edges of his source material, focusing on the relationships and juxtapositions of his samples instead. Rather than indulging in multiple layers of textures, this is a decidedly concrete interpretation of pop ambient, dealing with distinct musical objects and their different states of aggregation in time. Nevertheless, there's a lot of purely emotional adventure to be found in Im Blickfeld -- take the sophisticated soaring of "Falke," for example, or the somewhat cozy dissonances of "Nicht Genug": these are tracks that don't remain stationary, but take you travelling into fascinating mental territory, thanks to their unique arrangements and hand-picked sonics. "During production, I always had these images in mind, of a hunter sitting in his deerstand, contemplating his extended field of vision," Pfeiffer recalls. "He's got a lot of time at his hands to muse about things and take in the silence before the storm."
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