From the small to the large: The soil on which a seed grows into a tree, a building is erected, human existences come and go, flow into and replace each other, while a regularly renewed intangible feeling of being at home creates a warm connection between place and person; Vlimmer wants to plow up this soil on his fourth album and rob it of its very own magic.
For the musician, this means separating himself from learned patterns, getting rid of his certainties, approaching his own identity from a different perspective. Is that possible? “Bodenhex” is a document of the process of this attempt, which is not about isolating oneself from society, but about finding oneself in the overflowing stimuli on offer: ‘Give me this downpour of overflow / I wasn’t asked if I could do it all’ (“Vielzuviel”).
Out of the chaos of life, the individual emerges who has no one to justify himself to but himself. So the opener “2025” starts with sparse, chugging, laid-back beats to foggy drone, intoning ethereal, lifeless vocals and increasing the tension with every passing minute, be it distorted drawn-out guitars, increasingly dense tribal drums, echoing raspy screams far beyond the horizon until Donat finally breaks out into a more passionate vocal style.
Vlimmer has turned his sound upside down and continues to do so: the foreboding of the approaching attack is immediately confirmed in the thundering “Überrennen” which combines industrial with metallic shoegaze and blastbeat slaps in the face. After that, Donat makes up for it with indie-wave and electro-pop excursions, but ensures a constant atmospheric wisp in the firmament with haunting zithers, streaky post-punk guitars and dark synthesizers. The concluding blackgaze-meets-darkwave race, “Fadenverlust”, pulverizes itself to forestall the inevitable apocalypse.
Soil burnt. Restart?
