Chris Breuer, Nic Stockmann and Felix Gebhard who are Berlin-based experimental trio ZAHN release their third album `PURPER` this month with guest appearances by Fabian Bremer (Radare, AUA) and Kjetil Nernes (Årabrot). While their 2023 release `Adria` offered a vivid escape through Krautrock, Dark Jazz, Noise Rock, and Post-Punk, this time `Purpur` draws listeners into a denser, more intricate, and tightly woven soundscape.
The album opens with `Stroboskop` or stroboscope, which is an instrument that produces short, repetitive flashes of light, creating the illusion that a rapidly moving object is slowed down, stationary, or even moving in reverse, used for analysing motion, setting engine timing (timing light), or creating special effects in art/film. There is a kind of cinematic sense, an almost calm before the storm with an unspoken restrained tension throughout this fairly illusory listen. It`s as if something is being covertly suggested but not necessarily acknowledged. Experimental recurring beats and heavier tones that are interspersed throughout reminded me of Can with `Gensher`. This is before it veered into a more dream like ambience and taking an electronic windswept stark journey along with further heavy guitar riffs allowing a desolate isolated imagine to be revealed.
`Diaabend` according to the band “is our attempt to capture the strange magic of a real slide-show evening: that harmless clicking through the first images, the slow sinking into nostalgia, and then the emotional peak when the old family photos appear—beautiful, painful, and sometimes a bit embarrassing. And when it all becomes too much, there’s nothing left but drifting into the absurd.” It`s at times erratic, agitated, even to the point of portraying a nervousness but has some sparkling shimmering guitar chord loops on route. To me `Solex` conjures up sunlight and begins like a gentle soothing awakening and drifts along with some heavier chords and synth tones allowing it to become more searching and probing. It kind of stimulated me to start contemplating on life and the purpose of our existence.
In `Alhambra` I felt summoned to an enigmatic place, site, or destination where differing religions cross, intelligent maybe secretive and mysterious. I felt a kind of secretness or that maybe an enigma was going to be solved or revealed. The title and audibly `Katamaran` draws up pictures of twin-hulled boats and a sense of soaring across a mass of sea or water. Oceanic and aquatic with an underlying but unspoken risk of danger.
An `Atoll` is a ring-shaped coral reef, island, protecting lagoons, forming vital, biodiverse marine habitats for fish and turtles, shielding coastlines from storms and this track does certainly evoke a sense of wellbeing, security, and safety. The LP closes with `Butter` a rhythmic rock out which is both hypnotic and compelling with its nigh on cyclical ambience.
As i`ve grown older, i`ve started to appreciate albums that are of a more instrumental genre almost mood music which at times can be unorthodox or unconventional which in my twenties I’d have run a mile from, maybe is a maturity gained with age or just an inevitability in facing as we all will, our own mortality.
`Purpur` translates to Purple a dark colour made by mixing blue and red rich shades and here the trio blend shades and tones of music that have a fragile dark tender beauty and delicate sensitivity at times. This experimental band have created a collection of tracks that will offer you something different each time you return to listen depending on the disposition you`re in or your emotive state. Give it a listen and draw your own conclusions
Rating 9/10
