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TRAGEDY & GEOMETRY

Steve Hauschildt

Progressive Electronic


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Steve Hauschildt Tragedy & Geometry album cover
3.05 | 9 ratings | 3 reviews | 11% 5 stars

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Studio Album, released in 2011

Songs / Tracks Listing

1. Polyhymnia (3:00)
2. Batteries May Drain (4:10)
3. Cupid's Dart (1:39)
4. Already Replaced (4:03)
5. Peroxide (3:32)
6. Arche (1:16)
7. Music For A Moiré Pattern (11:04)
8. Blue Marlin (4:20)
9. The Impossible Flower (3:00)
10. Too Short A Season (4:20)
11. Allegiance (5:56)
12. Tragedy & Geometry (4:28)
13. Overnight Venusian (6:04)
14. Stare Into Space (5:06)

Total time 61:58

Line-up / Musicians

- Steve Hauschildt ‎/ performer, composer, arranger, production & mixing


Note : The actual instrumentation could not be fully confirmed at this moment

Releases information

Artwork: "Matrix II" by Erwin Redl

CD Kranky ‎- krank160 (2011, US)

LPx2 Kranky ‎- krank160 (2011, US)

Digital album

Thanks to philippe for the addition
and to projeKct for the last updates
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STEVE HAUSCHILDT Tragedy & Geometry ratings distribution


3.05
(9 ratings)
Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music(11%)
11%
Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection(11%)
11%
Good, but non-essential (78%)
78%
Collectors/fans only (0%)
0%
Poor. Only for completionists (0%)
0%

STEVE HAUSCHILDT Tragedy & Geometry reviews


Showing all collaborators reviews and last reviews preview | Show all reviews/ratings

Collaborators/Experts Reviews

Review by Guldbamsen
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Retired Admin
3 stars Aquarium tales

If you wonder what music to put on, when nothing´s on the telly and you aren´t improving your oboe skills in the slightest -and just want some time to yourself happily spent watching the colourful flashes radiating from your neon fish shoals - then look no further. This outing feels like the perfect soundtrack for small rainbow coloured cichlids zipping about in geometric shape-shifting patterns inside the miniature sea world of your aquarium.

Steve Hauschildt is a new boy on the block - at least to me that is. He´s been a member of electronic artist Emeralds for several years, where he´s explored many facets to this bubbly genre. Noise, ambient, Berliner Schule and a bunch of other different approaches. From what I´ve heard in Emeralds music, this new album of his called Tragedy & Geometry sounds altogether different. Hauschildt draws his inspiration from many of the head honchos of the progressive electronic world. I hear some references coming from the early Klaus Schulze albums - although they are hiding pretty well beneath the somewhat modern surface this album exudes, but they are there. The track Peroxide is a perfect example of this, where the synths form into thick electrically charged storm clouds of sound slowly percolating these giant breadths of oscillating soundscapes. I´d wish the album had more of these dreamy oozing tracks, where everything just flows.

The main inspiration here however, is Manuel Göttsching, and it becomes remarkably clear just how much of an inspiration his genius chessboard album from 1981 is to Hauschildt. These micro-tonal hypnotic beats, moving in minuscule slightly shifting patterns - like big oceanic waves of mosaic sounds - are indeed what drives this album. It´s like watching images of spheres and blurry looking planets illuminated by stroboscopic lighting. When you listen to this album whilst looking at the laser infected cover, the music suddenly swarms around the room like a private Who concert(remember those laser green accompaniments they had back in the day?) with grandiose light show and all - only here with electronic music as your sonorous mistress. The longest track here called Music for a Moiré Pattern shows how elegantly Hauschildt weaves these micro-tonal eccentricities into one another, and as a result of this he succeeds in doing something that is terribly difficult. He makes it sound like he was the originator of this rather fluid electronic movement, -even if Göttsching commenced it with his Early Water recordings from back in 76.

This is a very smooth and delightful album, which, had it been released some 30 years ago and trimmed down a bit, - would have deserved a big 4 star rating from yours truly. As it is, perhaps too long and slightly meandering, I´ll keep the one star lying comfortably on the bottom of my trouser pocket. Still, I think some people around here, have forgotten how wonderful and captivating a 3 star record can be, and this is surely one of those. I love listening to this, and it keeps my concentration revitalized and blooming like no other remedy could hope to achieve- filling my head with bubbling images of these entrancingly swarming shoals of fish.

Review by colorofmoney91
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars Tragedy & Geometry is basically very active (usually mid-paced) ambient music that relies mostly on thin sounding cascades of notes held together by soaring synth melodies. When most people think of ambient, they may think of never-ending drones that sound ethereal or angelic, and while this album does have that ethereal sound, most of the tracks on this album have some energetic character that alludes to Berlin school style of electronic composition and newer experimental electronic artists, except the spacey atmosphere is traded for more serenity.

Although this album's music is initially very soothing and engaging, it starts to get very samey and uninteresting just before the half-way point. Only a few tracks stand out to me, and those are "Batteries May Drain" which features Haushildt's serene ambient combined with an uptempo drum track that makes this sound like the most sophisticated synth-pop, "Music for a Moire Pattern" which is primarily an epic showcasing of Hauschildt exploring the glassy cascades of synth patterns for 11 minutes and gets quite hypnotizing, "Overnight Venusian" which adds considerable darkness to the sound that's been established on all of the previous songs on this album (finally some mood change), and "The Impossible Flower" takes the same glassy synths and adds an effects that makes them sound as if they were submerged in water giving this single track a strong aquatic feel (very video game "water level"). Even with four standout tracks, most of the album still sounds entirely samey and, while pleasant, feels more like a chore to get through than an enjoyment.

Tragedy & Geometry is a very soothing album that is as relaxing as it is beautiful, but lack of variety throughout makes this album a bit too long-winded (especially at over an hour in length), but what we have here is proof that Steve Hauschildt, performing solo and away from his group Emeralds, has a lot of potential. This is a good album, but I'm confident that Hauschilt can do much better.

Review by admireArt
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars Steve Hauschildt´s Tragedy & Geometry (2011) makes quiet a statement for a musician who is looking for a personal way of expression, which of course still shows some close influences, nevertheless compensates with a honest approach, a good quantity of doses of his own evolving musical idiom and very creative, fresh and well crafted electronic music solutions to quiet well traveled roads.

This album had the luck to get two very well written and explanatory reviews before mine in these Prog archives which kind of helps to set its whats & whereabouts and reason of existence, which usually I really not account for my music appreciation nor rating, but agree with both reviewers on the fact that even if it is not flawless what is valuable is truly worth listening (I myself will keep it due to the same).

***3.5

P.S. Even if it all seems pretentiously conceptual, the songwriting is independent of its showcase thus quiet unpretentious and up front.

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