Spherical Disrupted - Barriere / Barriere Zwei

An album of remixes such as this Barriere sounds like a terrible idea. Logically, different artists' reinterpretation of tracks should only lead to pieces that might well be good on their own, but have little to do together. So this, here, is to be seen as a regular compilation and not as an artist album. On top of it, seeing the recurrence of some of the titles (Leer and Kein, for example), it is pretty obvious this will sound quite repetitive.
What a surprise, then, to hear the result! Not only the mood is stunningly consistent, all the versions presented here are also different enough to keep the listener interested for the whole duration of the disc. From droney ambient to machinery rhythms, those pieces are mostly nostalgic and mysterious, always atmospheric.
Vollmer's remixes of Projektor have to be excluded from that review, though. They all sound rather similar and are all equally irritating, really: 10 minutes of a track that sounds as if the CD were skipping constantly (with the guaranteed consequence that one will be checking if the player works properly or if the CD is damaged). Quite painful. And seeing as versions 2 and 3 fill up two thirds of Barriere Zwei, listening to the bonus CDr in full leaves a disappointing aftertaste.