Tarwater - Inside The Ships

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4...according to our Business Lady on Thu 08 Sep, 2011.

These lads have managed ten studio albums before my ears finally got around to listening to them properly, shame on me. This Berlin based duo comprised of budding electronics enthusiasts Ronald Lippok (also of To Roccoco Rot) and Bernd Jestram have forged a unique sound over the years that flirts with the principles of Krautrock whilst maintaining a pop sensibility that sees the group commonly labeled as 'indietronics', a phrase I rather like to be honest. It's certainly an easy way to classify their organic electronic style without being derogative or pigeonholing the band. 'Inside The Ships' was originally conceived as a space-opera which strikes me as a plausible idea in the hands of these lads. Throughout the eleven tracks on offer here a broad spectrum of musical themes are covered (Kraut-grooves, minimalist electronica, organic pop, avant-garde composition, classical pop, jazz-fusion) yet they all share in common a cold, methodical approach that could easily be associated with the emotional detachment of space travel and the vast emptiness of the universe. The surprise here is the range of instruments used to create the desired sounds with brass, mallets, live percussion and guitars making regular appearances. Other surprises are the inclusion of the Plastic Ono Band's 'Do The Oz' which is treated to a full Tarwater makeover and works as effectively as anything else here, even with the addition of a saxophone solo. Top little album and an office favourite so I'm told.

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The Berlin-based electronic duo (Ronald Lippok and Bernd Jestram) have released ten regular studio albums, collaborated with various artists (including Piano Magic, Tuxedo Moon, B. Fleischmann) and produced music for numerous films and theater pieces. Lippok has also played in the band To Rococo Rot since 1995. File under: Indietronics, Neo-Krautrock ****
"Inside The Ships" is the latest and the eleventh studio album by Bernd Jestram and Ronald Lippok. On board are eleven songs that reflect the different facets of the Tarwater sound cosmos: Dense soundscapes created by skillfully interweaving electronic and analogue sounds. When the duo began working on the new album over two years ago, they initially intended to create a Space Opera. That was not to be, but the resulting visions of the future, fictional knowledge and the distant and unknown served as the inspiration for these songs. Yet despite titles like "Inside the Ships", "Radio War" or "Do the Oz", this is not a concept album. Tarwater have always befuddled the fanatics of stringent categorization among pop analysts. The synesthesia produced upon hearing the new album - seeing alien worlds by means of acoustic stimuli - is deftly created by Jestram and Lippok in their own special way. They have dispensed with coldness and overtly technoid sounds. Science-fiction folklore remains sidelined. The "otherness" is produced, for example, through the use of brass (tuba, saxophone, horn, trumpet and trombone) and other instruments that are otherwise used far from the pop-context - such as the cimbalom. You really have to listen twice to distinguish the individual instruments. Even with these unusual elements, Tarwater's sound cosmos remains an organic whole and is immediately captivating on first listen. Tarwater's aesthetic defies categorization. While in the past the German press worked with the deliberately vague term "indietronics", their English counterparts like to associate the duo with a tradition directly linked to Krautrock.

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