This album needs to be discussed. And so that there is still enough room to do so in this review, we will shorten the title slightly. Thinking… is a collaborative project/album/whatever, conceived and initiated by Florian TM Zeisig, who for many years has supplied the Dutch outsider label STROOM 〰 with music far removed from any beaten path – as recently as 2025, his last new-age ambient album A New Life appeared there.
At the outset, no one here was thinking in terms of an album. Over recent years, Zeisig worked – mostly remotely – with people such as harpist Roison Berkeley and composer and singer more eaze, who can be heard on many of the tracks, developing numerous sketches, drafts and ideas. In the studio, these were then allowed to take shape as songs through meticulous solo work.
And in the end, it is still unmistakably Zeisig. Above all in the album’s sonic attitude. Seductively reverberant brass simply “happens” here alongside Auto-Tune and noodling guitar. Building collages that turn into songs and seem as though they had always been conceived that way is an art – one that comes off especially on »Walk Away«: somewhere between 1990s dream pop, Tirzah, Dean Blunt and broken-looped R’n’B tapes from days gone by, we hear one of the best songs of the year so far.
