Catalogue number 101 is for Scanner & Modelbau, who created two pieces of vinyl worth of music entitled "Loess". We won't be saying anything about Robin or Frans here because they're both frequently mentioned in Vital. It is interesting that maybe because they've both been active for so long, they've used many creative methods over the years. Yet somehow, they both felt the urge to keep their Fostex 280 four-track tape machines, which formed the basics of how this album was recorded. Old school, analogue, and all kinds of sonic artefacts are included when working on tape (compression, hiss, etc.). They both started recording stuff and exchanged tapes through snail-mail, after which the works were finalised by the other. Almost unimaginable when you consider the possibilities of filesharing and working in the digital domain, but... It had to be like this.
"Loess" has under 80 minutes on four sides of vinyl, so there is enough 'body' to make everything sound good. Two or three tracks per side, ten in total. The style of the music is a bit more 'structured' than what you would expect from Modelbau, and it's a bit more 'droney' than you would expect from Scanner these days. Nice lush layers of sound, never intensely loud, always in balance, constantly surprising and always in development... Really intense.
A release that is really beautiful and worth your time. I definitely wouldn't mind hearing more of this.
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