aera-the sound path

Born in the high north of Germany and now a Berlin resident, Ralf Schmidt, aka Aera, first appeared on the electronic music map when he established his own Aleph Music label back in 2010. With only a handful of releases, Aera was able to lay out his very own musically topography on the cutting edges between house, psychedelia, and breakbeats. This colorful mix culminated on his debut album Offseason Traveller in 2013, resonating the past forty years of electronic music, which brought him the attention of a wider audience as well as fellow DJs and producers. So it was a logical consequence that his talent also attracted other labels and lead to widely praised releases on Innervisions, Maeve, or John Talabot's Hivern Discs. With these, Aera's sound bloomed further into bubbly acid and trancey territories and his fine reputation as a singular producer, travelling DJ, and remixer flourished. With The Sound Path Aera continues his musical travels on Permanent Vacation. His second album is the most coherent and definitely most personal work to date. Here, he has perfected his sound even further -- adding nuances from the meadows of new age, kraut cliffs, and high-flying kites of ambient. Complete with the cinematic and natural qualities of Ralf's music, it will draw you in deeply through a great variety of landscapes before your inner eye. However, you'll never lose track, because this path is beautifully illuminated.