extrawelt: unknown

Extrawelt are Arne Schaffhausen and Wayan Raabe. Both have been around for about 40 years, and making music together for half that time. They enjoy normal things and are ashamed of their carbon footprints due to the large number of flights they take to bring them to their gigs. Unknown is the tenth studio album from the producer team, and the fourth under the name Extrawelt; it's largely devoted to another side of their creations. Extrawelt releases always have been somehow different yet, despite becoming instantly absorbed into the familiar Extrawelt atmosphere when listening, one can't help but notice something's very different. Feet are bouncing, the mind is traveling; one imagines what it would be like to listen to Unknown with closed eyes in the midst of a throbbing concert instead of through laptop speakers. Listening to Extrawelt on crappy speakers is anyway never a good idea; leave the confines of a lo-fi laptop world and get in the car. Crank up the stereo, and cruise around aimlessly, lost in an appreciation of the music. One has the urge to speed up, even if one is usually a very sensible driver, the bass and beats blowing up in one's face. This is something undeniably Extrawelt, yet inherently different to what we've come to expect from the Hamburg pair. Something about this twelve-track journey fits together so superbly it's hard not to be overcome with at least a few shivers up the spine. With profound bass lines and cutting drums, one keeps coming back to these sounds, again and again. Whether this is exotic or native doesn't matter; all that matters is it's great, and it isn't techno! Somehow, Extrawelt have accomplished staying true to themselves despite deploying not even one four-to-the floor-bass drum. Admittedly, one can find a couple of similar tracks on a few of their previous releases, but here is got a whole album full of it. What genre of music is this actually? Neo-Electro? Alternative Electronica? Emo-EDM?? These guys don't like to be put into boxes; it's simply Extrawelt. The tracks on Unknown began simmering more than ten years ago without any goal or idea regarding if they'd end up releasing them. This explains how Unknown appeared so quickly after their most recent album, Fear Of An Extra Planet.