various: enjoy the silence vol 3

A touch of classical music, left-field electronics, ambient love affairs, and discreet dubby house emotions without a kick drum: the third installment of Mule Musiq's famed Enjoy the Silence sampler serial swings gentle, tricky, and multidimensional. This time, the atmosphere focuses on avant-garde textures with a touch of very diverse genres and styles. Koss, Lawrence, and DJ Sprinkles aka Terre Thaemlitz are part of a dove-like sound cruise that allows you to be in many spaces and places at the same time. Beside them, some new names appear like Vermont, Recondite, Petre Inspirescu, and John Roberts, delivering musical voyages that seem to be produced by unique subconscious decisions and not by assembly-line craftsmanship for art. The sampler kicks off with Hauschka and his composition "Wind," an arrangement in which the prepared piano player from Düsseldorf converges two dulcet melodies into a soulful arch of sweetness. Right after this sublime piano gem, the Romanian producer Petre Inspirescu melts classic and electronic into a tempting maelstrom that celebrates the freedom of leaving blanks. The very special magnetizing quality of his music can be felt twice. His second contribution seduces with starry-eyed violins, piano minimalism, and pulsating electronics. Koss plays profound piano and lets it flirt with glockenspiel, wind instruments, and softly-wiped drum brushes. The only remix work on Enjoy the Silence Vol. 3 is produced by the magic mind of Terre Thaemlitz, who re-edits a track by young Japanese artist Daisuke Masuo aka Primula into a deep, absorbing melancholic ambient piece which bedevils with a variety of submerging and emerging sounds. Recondite's track "Corvid" could be the main soundtrack theme of a futuristic psychedelic Western in a world with little light and loads of romantic hope. The freshly-formed duo Vermont, consisting of Innervisions artists Marcus Worgull and retro-futuristic German house pioneer Danilo Plessow aka Motor City Drum Ensemble, serve up "Leerer Rat," a playful crescendo arrangement guided by an airy feeling for Krautrock-ish proportions, an instinct for space melodies, and an emotional language between two souls spoken during sonic adventures on vintage analog synthesizers. The most nervous seducer on the compilation comes from John Roberts, who let trumpets, piano, and violin dance with fidgety percussions. Producers Roman Flügel and Lawrence mainly avoid classical approaches to ambient music in their compositional contributions. Even if the former touches on some classic atmospheres with his track, the stretched sounds and melodies in it are determined by a more typical ambient magic. The latter delivers a dub-loving tempter that comes around with a little hint of house while letting spheres of magical tones freewheel. Altogether, here are 10 tracks by nine children of Brian Eno, Cluster, Arvo Pärt, and Steve Reich, who all express something honest and unsophisticated while using their machines and instruments in a heartfelt way.