With regards to the still huge general interest in Krautrock, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that space-related themes keep infusing various styles of music. The “Frames EP” presents one of the more unusual combinations, even though the ideal fit of its constituent elements would have suggested of something of this sort being produced much earlier.

As it is, Stefan "Kosmonaut" Mader may well have released the first “Cosmic Drum n Bass” album – a genre we’ll undoubtedly hear a lot more of once these five tracks of infinite breabeat orbits, melodic comet showers, fluttering bass nebulas and angelic star chants have been digested by Mader’s colleagues.

What essentially constitutes a small first step for him will therefore turn out to be a big one for the scene. The circular propulsion of polyrythmic metal in Drum n Bass has always had a strong eye of the storm effect, filling the listener with the sensation of travelling at the speed of light, while roaming the infinite depth lurking behind his eyelids. “Frames” uses this inherent element as a basis for even more weightless rocket science, creating two layers of movement in the process.

The first is made up of typical beats and bass structures, which derive their hypntoic character from a very physical groove and a stoic repetition without great complexity in breaks or metrum. The relative simplicity of this layer is however offset by the mesmerising milkyway of shapes and forms, dreamily errupting from the void in a gentle genesis and returning to silence in an inverse big bang.

Everything is caught in a cosmic circle dance of creation and decay, every moment “is”, instead of trying to turn into something else or contribute to a bigger entity. Even though it evokes very lucid images of other worlds, “Frames” works more on a microcosmic level instead if extending its expanse beyond our own solar system. Maybe that is why it sounds so warm and familiar, despite its galactic aspirations.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Ideology Netlabel