The wave of reissues that has been hitting my wallet since the beginning of this year keeps washing up new, half-forgotten loves onto my pre-order lists. Why the debut album by Arovane aka Uwe Zahn first came to see the light of vinyl under these circumstances after almost 22 years is a question that its lovers have never ceased to ask. In the meantime, it was my turn to scrape together the money for a private pressing. »Atol Scrap« was released in 1999 on the DIN label exclusively on CD. Which was completely incomprehensible. Incomprehensible because the album was the most beautiful, sensitive and mature that the German electronica soundscape had to offer at the end of the previous millennium. The grand melancholic excursions between downbeat, glitch and IDM were taking place on the other side of the English Channel at the time. Most of Germany was still in the embrace of techno. Apart from Arovane, only Funkstörung could be regarded as a serious German act capable of keeping up with the British icons – and not just degenerate into a pathetic, boring rip-off or become moribund through excessive conceptualisation. Of course, the sonic cosmos of Warp and Skam also reverberates on »Atol Scrap«. The mishmash of Autechre, Bola and B12 in particular shines at all the album’s unpolished corners and ends. Nevertheless, Uwe Zahn created an extremely independent sound image out of this amalgam at the time, which could easily keep up with his references. From the euphoric opener »Tascel_7« to the nocturnal title track, »Atol Scrap« has lost none of its magic since 1999. It’s nice to finally be able to witness the tracks spinning on the turntable.
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