Customer Reviews

Orchestra of Bubbles

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ellen Allien, DJ, techno artist, producer, and founder of the BPitch Control record label out of Berlin, teams up with another German producer and artist, Apparat. Prior to Ochestra of Bubbles, Allien's last release Thrills produced some excellent tech house and minimal tracks, but also had too many stale spots for a 10 track album. It wasn't quite as good as her stunning album before that, Berlinette. Now this teaming with Apparat has brought together one of the best electronic artist albums I've ever heard.

Right from the first two standout singles off the album, Turbo Dreams with it's pulsating beats and flowing horn, to Ellen's pop-like vocals on possibly the best track on here, Way Out, you know this is going to be something special. Track 3 was a little downgrade, with it's building strings sounding like a horror or war movie score, but tracks 4-10 were just incredible, eye-popping slices of techno that kept me spellbound through the start of each new track.

The one track voiced by Apparat, Leave Me Alone, is the low point of the album, with some awkward sounding vocals meshed with a very cheesy pop like melody. Right after that is the one boring instrumental on the CD, Edison, a crackily minimal track which literally goes nowhere. The CD closes with an incredible breathy downtempo vocal track sung by breathy, German accented Ellen, which I could have taken a 10 minute dose of instead of the 4:58 time.

I had sampled each track online because after Thrills, I thought it might be a case where I only wanted to download some of the tracks, but when I heard each of the tracks, they all sounded so good I just had to get the whole thing and I am glad I did, as I got 11 out of 13 solid electronic tracks.

FYI: There's already two good remixes out there of Turbo Dreams, plus and elongated track of the album version, and an upcoming remix of Way Out by Robag Wruhme that I just heard of sample of and I'm dying to get my hands on!

Last year, Apparat (aka Sascha Ring) released the excellent Silizium EP, which contained the song "It's Gonna Be A Long Walk," one of my favorite songs of 2005. Although I wasn't completely excited about Ellen Allien's last album Thrills, she's been a consistently exciting artist, and I was curious to see what the two would cook up together when it was announced they'd be releasing an album together.

Orchestra Of Bubbles is the result of their efforts, and other than a couple small lags, it's one of the more exciting electronic releases that I've heard in some time. The work of the two artists seems to fit together and overlap just about perfectly as razor sharp beats and cracking production mixes with some nice textures and vocal-driven tracks for a consistently fun album.

"Turbo Dreams" opens the release strong as a gurgling synth bass flows underneath some scorching guitar-esque riffs and crisp beats that snap and pop in all the right places. "Way Out" follows, and it finds Allien adding vocals over a blistering, electro-tinged track that's downright poppy as it progresses through a couple brisk verses and a soaring guitar closing section.

A large part of the album is instrumental, and while the duo manages to keep things together most of the time, they seem to lose focus in a couple places, as on the old-school pitch-bending weirdness of "Do Not Break" and the five-minute "Under," where almost three-fourths of the track passes before much of anything happens. Apparat takes lead vocals on only a single track on the disc, and from the sounds of "Leave Me Alone," he should have maybe done it a bit more often, as the string-laced, lurching track is one of the most outstanding on the album. The short "Metric" is just as solid, tying string stabs with brisk, percolating electro production. An excellent album, Orchestra Of Bubbles should appeal to fans of either artist, or those looking for a slab of brisk electronic pop to blast this summer.

(from almost cool music reviews)

Usually with collaborations, one voice dominates the other. However, with Ellen Allien and Apparat's ORCHESTRA OF BUBBLES, each partner is given equal time. So while Allien's industro-techno leanings are immediately apparant on "Turbo Dreams" and "Way Out," Apparat's classical touch can be felt on the strings in "Retina" and "Metric." The driving "Jet" has Allien's guitar work balanced by Apparat's chilly and deft synths. "Do Not Break" has a smart rhythm topped with a heavily chopped and processed voca sample--funky indeed. The sweet vocals of "Leave Me Alone" feel adroitly balanced atop the stop-start strings and the driving beat, while "Edison" has an aharmonic zither playing over a throbbing IDM backdrop. "Bubbles" closes the album on a mysterious note, Allien's whispered vocals, blending into the melodic tones. Let's hope we hear more from these two soon.

I'm not someone who is a buff of this type of music, but I do enjoy this album. I bought this in duplex at the same time, and I would say this album is far more listenable than duplex. Would recommend, but don't spend too much on it.

Ellen Allien and Apparat own the electronic/house/IDM/minimal techno scene of today, like Sasha and Digweed owned the trance scene in the 90's. They are tops in electronic music today. That is a strong statement I know, but judging from the small number of reviews of this album, The electronic music fans need to know about the German juggernaut's. From start to finish you will not be disappointed. My personal FAV. is (Edison). Its atmosphere of what sounds like tiny falling metal balls on a metal table sets up some kind of Japanese stringed instrument; Amazing. That song as Apparat's IDM/minimaltech. sound all over it. The house sound of the first cut, (turbo dreams) is the work of Allien surely. The to artist's styles weave in and out together through the hole album perfectly. So kid's do your research. Catch up with us, and get into best electronic music of today.

I've heard a number of all-star collaborations that produced mediocre results. Slag Boom Van Loon should have been a stellar album. Speedy J and u-ziq? What could be better? The results were okay, but fell far below what I had hoped. I was skeptical about this CD when I first bought it. I like Ellen Allien a lot and I've just lately been getting into Apparat. I was very pleasantly surprised with this. It seems to combine the best of both artists into what I hope will be a continuing series of collaborations.

It's danceable, maybe a bit more so than Apparat's usual style, but rhythmically interesting. So often the tired four-on-the-floor beats do little to differentiate themselves from all the rest, but here, the foundation is further enhanced by microscopic little touches - it makes all the difference.

The main strength is the melodic component of each track. If you've heard Apparat's "Walls" album, you know what to expect: tuneful, if slightly mellow electronic music that is both danceable and listenable. I'm happy that the album isn't totally dominated by Allien's vocals. While her voice is very effective on her own work, it would have given this CD a different and altogether more mundane feel. Instead, the music is mostly instrumental allowing for different song structures.

While I say that the melodic content is impressive, that doesn't mean there's a shortage of interesting sounds. Quite the contrary. It's just that the sounds are themselves melodic, rather than rhythmic. When listening to, say, Richard Devine, I'm constantly aware of the amazing sounds he's getting out of his computer, but they are textural rather than melodic. Orchestra of Bubbles clearly falls in the latter category.

If you're a fan of Ellen Allien or Apparat, this is a no-brainer. Buy this immediately. I'd also recommend this to fans of forward-thinking electronic and dance music. It's definitely one of the more unique albums to come out this year.

Who would have thought the stutter step of Apparat's derivative IDM added to the abortive electrohouse aesthetic and peevish vox of Ellen Allien could have produced such an amazing synthesis of experimental dance music? By themselves neither are particularly groundbreaking artists, but like aspertame and high fructose corn syrup unite to make tastey sodas Apparat and Allien combine to become something far and away more interesting than their separate abilities could muster. The music is danceable yet nuanced, experimental but not alienatingly so, and the production innovative in its use of otherwise wornout house and nuskool breaks formats. The only caveate I would add to an otherwise stellar review is that Allien's and Apparat's vocal tracks should have been left on the cutting room floor; like Sophia Coppolla in Godfather 3, their horrid singing and nonsensical lyrics almost ruin a stunning LP. Luckily though the album's tracks are evenly split half with vocals and half without - and the have-nots far surpass the haves.