harmonious thelonious: instrumenals! (a collection of outernational music studies)

"Outer-national dance discourses, that strive for no country and obey to no flag: when Düsseldorf based producer, Stefan Schwander creates music as Harmonious Thelonious, highly percussive rhythms, dissonances and melodic twists tango chatoyant virtuosic. Since 2008 he releases music, that unites Detroit techno districts, widescreen minimalistic structures and African rhythm patterns into a wide dynamic scale. All eight musical objects collected on Instrumentals! document a chapter in Harmonious Thelonious's work, that left the noisy background drones behind in favor for a signature sound full of echoes of ancient rituals and ecstatic ceremonies. Eight growing outlaw music studies crammed with living, deeply haunting entities. They all came to life in different cities like Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, London or Paris, first published on labels like Asafa, Disk, The Trilogy Tapes, or Versatile. United under one roof, they unfold their magical groove symbolism, notable hypnotic harmony and agitating rhythm archetypes in a total overpowering coalition. Tunes like 'Beiläufige Muziek' or 'Yusuf' embark with a new breed of psychic leftfield Motor City techno, perfect for an electric drive on a multicultural utopian future highway. In contrast, tracks like 'Abel', 'Ayranman', 'Apakapa', or 'Halb Ding' perform tricky snake dances enlarged with Ghanaian highlife tones, Senegalese guitar folk and manic serpentine Moroccan flute wizardry. Intense buzzing voodoo music, driven by swinging bass pulses, sequencing looniness, moving up somewhere on a polyrhythmic horizon between Occident and Orient, end-to-end danceable, thoroughly transcending space and time." --Michael Leuffen