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Steve Hauschildt - Nonlin CD (album) cover

NONLIN

Steve Hauschildt

 

Progressive Electronic

3.96 | 38 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

BrufordFreak
5 stars New to me as of this album, I am blown away by Steve's innovative and refreshing approach to a melodic multi-instrumental (and multi-dimensional) Berlin School-type of electronic music. Steve merges recognizable instruments with computer generated "noise music," arpeggiated sequences, and even ambient techno synth washes and rhythms.

1. "Cloudloss" (3:45) a strangely satisfying excursion into controlled chaos as layered beauty of ambient synth washes are paired up with a cacophony discordant and, at times, disturbing computer noise "music." Somehow it works. (9/10)

2. "Subtractive Skies" (6:46) hypnotic ambient techno weave of layers of synths and computer percussives, all with a steady and driving presence of a pulsing bass line--at least until the final two minutes when bass cuts out as synth flock seems to fly slowly and beautifully fly away like a thick flock of birds all flying in perfectly synchrony. (14/15)

3. "A Planet Left Behind" (3:36) pitch-warped and warbled keyboard play is soon joined and suppressed by deep bass and slow rise of muted synth washes, thus creating space for a delicate dance of synth strings. Beautifully "orchestrated." (9.5/10)

4. "Attractor B" (5:29) opens with slow pensive electric piano chords, by the third minute has become dominated by computer techno noise music. (9/10)

5. "The Nature Remaining" (2:34) echoing electric piano play over distant etheric synth washes. (4.25/5)

6. "Nonlin" (5:15) techno track and RADIOHEAD-like synth chord with busy and heavily treated bass synth performing the lead work. Interesting for the pops and glitches. (8.5/10)

7. "Reverse Culture Music" (6:09) opens sounding like a slow Gamelan song performed by Western orchestral strings under the guidance of Phillip Glass. By the second minute it has morphed into a more Western hypno-trance piece with Steve Reich and Pat Metheny's guidance. By the third minute it's feeling more like a SEQUENTIA LEGENDA song. Cool and sly flow of transformative shape-shifting. The cello use is genius! (9.5/10)

8. "The Spring In Chartreuse" (3:26) this is no spring from my experience! Maybe the opening of discordant backward notes is supposed to represent the chaos of late Winter weather, or perhaps the title is merely an afterthought, but the weave of reverse and forward arpeggi is weird and a bit unsettling. Still, nobody else that I know of is doing taking music in this direction. (8.5/10)

9. "American Spiral" (5:35) slow arpeggio of VANGELIS-like space synth notes opens this one--notes covering the entire breadth of the keyboard. At the one minute mark a blob of computer noise music in a kind of raw Kanye West "Faster, stronger" pattern enters while the space notes continue to arpeggiate slowly behind. The noise music gets quite gnarly, like the movement and noise of a creature from Ghostbusters. Weird, ending with a slow exit/escape of the alien usurper. (8.5/10)

Total time 42:35

4.5 stars. I vouch for this album as a masterpiece of progressive electronic music though it only qualifies as a near-masterpiece of progressive rock.

BrufordFreak | 5/5 |

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