1000schoen* – Moune

Vital Weekly (18th January 2011)
Troum came from Maeror Tri. A trio reduced to a duo, so what happened to the third person? Helge Siehl started his own project, 1000schoen, and has had a few releases as such. This might very well be his first real CD release. Its not easy to review this and not to think of Maeror Tri or Troum, simply because there is a similarity between all three. Now if Siehl would have picked up the acoustic guitar and sang songs, it would have been easy: it would be very different. But in the three pieces, two long one short, Siehl continues to explore his own version of his own legacy. He does that in a slightly different way than Troum. Whereas Troum offers a very dense sound of atmospheric sound, layering many sounds together, to put the icing on the cake, it seems to me that Siehl likes a less crowded palette of sounds, stripping and reducing until he is left with a handful of sounds to work. In the final short track it seems that he is using voice only and for me it broke with the natural
flow of the two longer pieces. In those he chooses to work with guitars and synthesizers, along with a bit of sound effects, but throughout in a more minimal field. The opening piece 'Moune Rising' moves along those bass lines, field recordings and finds itself eventually taken over by some more synthetic sounds, whereas 'Moune' is more a piece of gentle processed guitar sounds and rusty field recordings of large, empty factories. Not entirely surprising in the world of drone music, but then perhaps so isn't Troum either, but its quite exciting to hear this album and if Maeror Tri and Troum are close to your heart, then you'd should be lending 1000schoen an ear too. Equally good, I'd say. (text by Frans de Waard)