A cryptic name that gives little to no information to those who do not know what an I.A.O. or what phase the third one was. In the context of the release on the deep-digging label Left Ear, this phase 3 refers to a period between 1988 and 1995. During the seven years Achim Kohlberger, Ralf Östereich and Carsten Zielske met regularly to search and find a musical expression for the world political changes (Berlin Wall, end of the Soviet Union, Attac etc.). Kohlberger, Östereich and Zielske founded InAndOut already in 1983 in Berlin. The first one was to found the Atonal Festival together with Dimitri Hegemann years later. As a musician it was not so atonal at all. Especially the creative episode presented here is rather characterized by soundtrack-like tracks and loose, epheremic songs that only know what techno is in their innermost being. Much more one looks (probably purely by chance) to Japan: Ryuichi Sakamoto and Haruomi Hosono could have been the godfathers. It plicks and plucks here. Doesn’t really sound like the eighties or nineties. Nowadays you would tend to look for such music on Music From Memory or Growing Bin. This also clearly limits the audience for this monograph: Music lovers who prefer the particular to the obvious, who prefer the unknown to the popular. Distinction is guaranteed; in this case it’s a pity, because »Phase 3« should be in every living room instead of Tangerine Dream or Jean-Michel Jarre.
Phase 3
