An album of hypnagogic nocturnes that relentlessly searches for a sense of calm in the great unknown, Is Peace Wild? is German producer, drummer and visual artist Ludwig Wandinger's long-awaited debut solo full-length. He dreamt it up while unpacking the breakdown of a long relationship, working in hotel rooms during the downtime between a series of chaotic live shows. To help empty his mind, Wandinger developed a suite of soulful reflections that prioritize harmony over rhythm and clarity over trivial complexity -- music that confronts the eternal duality of romance and tragedy. Almost beatless and consistently sublime, Is Peace Wild? is punctuated by hypnotic lyrical contributions from multidisciplinary artist, poet and activist Yves B. Golden and producer and vocalist Evita Manji, both of whom bless the album with indispensable friendship and familiarity. With a series of albums and EPs under his belt already, Wandinger is a tireless solo artist and a prolific collaborator. Is Peace Wild?, though, emerges as Wandinger's most personal work to date. The title track opens the album, and Golden's voice breathes softly over Wandinger's warm, lulling arpeggios. This airiness doesn't last long: on the noisy, sombre "Vien," Wandinger interrupts his elegiac, organ-like synths with metallic crashes and distorted, rasping bass, weaving twinkling, pensive notes into the spaces in-between. The oscillation between darkness and light is remarkably even-handed, capturing the aching sense of longing -- or "Sehnsucht" -- that's at the core of German Romanticism. And it's even more evident on "Xhausted Form," one of the album's heaviest tracks. The album's illusory qualities are fully dilated on "Fire." Manji's hypnotic freestyle was recorded in a single take as they were lying in bed on the verge of falling asleep, and provides a quiescent counterpoint to Wandinger's muted trance vibrations. "The world is on fire drowning in its own fluids," they slur into the abyss, vocalizing playfully while Wandinger freezes the sentiment in vanishing 4/4 thuds and dissociated processes. This makes the baroque "Overlife" and the noisy "Eternal Image" all the more dynamic. On the latter, Wandinger creates a noisy, apocalyptic atmosphere for Golden's sardonic words, cooling his euphoric synths with hissing white noise and burnished cybernetic textures. Open-ended and tangled with emotional paradoxes, Is Peace Wild? can be interpreted in many different ways. For fans of: Aphex Twin, Kali Malone, Sarah Davachi, Kara-lis Coverdale, Tim Hecker, Sigur Ros, Laurel Halo.
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