Review

Tolouse Low Trax

Leave Me Alone

Bureau B • 2023

On his fifth album under the name Tolouse Low Trax, Detlef Weinrich leaves the conventional club to the side once again. »Leave Me Alone« sounds as lonely as its name over long stretches. Unconventional sound constructions, where the components do not necessarily seem to be made for each other, make up the bulk of the tracks. On »How To Beat The Sea«, wry melodic fragments collide, provocatively mixed into the background, while reverberating kicks and snares that you wouldn’t really refer to as such compete in the foreground. Even a piece like »Gates«, which is not even two minutes long, doesn’t feel like it was designed on a drawing board, but rather collaged like a Dadaist work of art. What you hear in some places seems to have been strung together in a completely random way. It’s a different story with tracks like »Impure Nature«, which is characterised by chanting in the style of the old »Mercy Seat« Nick Cave, with a mechanical bass line and discordant, choppy piano strokes. The formula works on the instrumental »I Prefer Not To«: For the first time on the album, something like a consistent, functional funk evolves, which Weinrich has cobbled together once again from bizarre ingredients, but which reliably does its job. This also works quite well on »Ossia« with its sophisticated, sensual vocals. Although Tolouse Low Trax pays homage to dub on »White Flicker«, for instance, »Leave Me Alone« has to make do without a punchy low end. Another stylistic device that predestines this LP for dancing in the abnormal. 
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Tolouse Low Trax
Leave Me Alone Black Vinyl Edition
from 27.99€