Niko Tzoukmanis is a hero, but not so many people know that. The mathematician with a doctorate has appeared in public as one half of the duo Audision, among others, but no new records have been released by them since 2013. Instead, Tzoukmanis released the first album of his project Microphase, »Hope Is The Sister Of Despair«, in the exact same year. He has now released it again under his own name, for the first time on vinyl and in a slightly expanded form. Instead of hanseatic, restrained techno, Niko Tzoukmanis concentrates on rhythmically compact structures almost entirely without a beat. Sounds like Audision without a drum machine at first. Which is not quite the case. Tzoukmanis simply has a knack of keeping sequencer repetitions flowing with so much or so little variation that, despite outwardly sparse activity, things remain constantly in motion with him. And he shapes the sounds in an unobtrusively stimulating way, rather warm than cold. Neuroscientists can probably better answer the question of whether this music has a cerebral effect and makes the body relax and agree or the other way round. But the question is irrelevant. Because the tracks, between six and almost ten minutes long, have a simple effect, provided you don’t have an acute allergy to repetition. They are restrained, cloudy moods that are nevertheless unreservedly good. Those who still need convincing: With the cover, a kind of Caspar David Friedrich motif, Tzoukmanis reveals himself to be a romantic, rational orientation or not.
U.e.
Hometown Girl
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