Bureau B
Düsseldorf musician Stefan Schwander returns with the deliberately derivatively titled Cheapo Sounds, an album almost solely created on an Elektron monomachine. Schwander has always been a master of the experimental, an international groove blender, combining American-influenced minimal music with African rhythms and European melodies.
Schwander is an original resident of the famous Salon des Amateurs club in Düsseldorf, famed for its unorthodox aesthetic, blending genres with an avant-garde style. This is Schwander’s 7th LP under the moniker of Harmonious Thelonious and sees him once again taking a journey of sonic exploration, combining rough, dense beats and textures with hypnotic grooves.
Cheapo Sounds lacks the instrumental variation of his last LP, Instrumentals! (A Collection of Outernational Music Studies), yet is as equally layered. Built around serrated percussion and twisted synth lines, it’s an urgent record. The grooves are hypnotic, occasionally monotonous, while rhythms are churned out in a factory-like manner. Schwander’s skill is undoubtable; even when at his most minimalist, he still creates a record that tests your ears.
The opener, ‘Soft Opening Machine’, has shades of Arabian disco with its unrelenting groove, driven by the soft patter of the percussion. It’s a hypnotic affair, while the piercing synths that drift across it give it a slightly eerie feel. ‘Liquid Sound Waves’ is one of the album’s highlights; it shimmers and bubbles gently, sound washing over you, all underpinned by this funky, seductive groove. ‘Limitations’ is more of a blunt hammer, with its industrial noises that make you feel like you’re in a factory. The whole track has an uneasy shuffle.
‘M and A’ pops and fizzes with a distorted beat that sounds like a sprinkler going off. It’s one of the album’s most textured affairs, with several hypnotic layers that weave in and out of each other. ‘Gummi Twist & Crawl‘ is a jaunty electro-swing affair, which finishes with this rattling, tin-like percussion. It’s a showcase of Schwander’s ability to combine different cultural rhythms. ‘Sunglasses’ is another industrial effort, driven by a monotone keyboard note, though the gentle synths bring a nice, if brief, soothing energy.
‘Orion Stars’ is built upon layered polyrhythms, bursting with an almost caged electricity, while in the background, it almost sounds like someone is chopping some particularly stubborn vegetables. Schwander creates interesting sounds throughout, able to mimic everyday noises and supplant them into his tracks. ‘Back from the Primitive Galaxy’ features a rare thumping beat that gets drowned out by colliding synth lines. The closer ‘Afterhour’ has a delicate fragility beneath its undulating synth line, providing one of the album’s most melodic moments.
Cheapo Sounds is a shuffling, distorted affair, full of quirky sounds and percolating rhythms. It’s largely mesmeric, with sounds that linger long after they’ve finished. It may lack some of the melody of previous efforts, such as Plong, but Schwander shows there’s power in minimalism.