Edward – Turning

That druins tracks might be the most sinister, dark & twisted piece of music I've ever heard. If that doesn't send shivers down your spine I don't know what will.

Does anyone have track times for the LP release ?

Edward’s Giegling tracks are remarkable for their refusal to isolate individual elements, often starting with the track's beat already in a mostly-finalized state. His previous works as a recording artist often feel as much like 'kosmiche musik' as they do techno or house, focused almost entirely on intriguingly-textured accents being introduced over unchanging loops whose formation concluded long before the listener arrived.

‘Turning’ is a departure in more ways than one. Not only do the first two-thirds of the record stay far away from any dance-floor elements, content in restrained ambient meditations on timbre, but also quietly find Edward meeting the listener at the ground floor in many places and walking them through multiple phases of structural development.

Surely this newfound access must be related to the stripped down nature of the pieces in the face of what we can now conclude is a particularly idiosyncratic beat-making process, but it does not feel like an admission of guilt or exposure of weakness. These structures feel as though they were wrought by a mature composer, and the harmonic patterns they contain are poetically inscrutable enough to be worthy of minimalism's spotlight.

Giegling’s decision to press it to a single LP highlights the modest nature of the album. None of the 16 abstract tracks are long or aggressive enough to make arrogant demands on the listener, but concerns that the album is mere experimental dithering are allayed as the final third builds back in the direction of driving rhythms. The album concludes at its highest point as the tonal themes presented in the early tracks are refrained with increasingly compelling rhythmic accompaniment. The resulting conclusion is a pleasant crossroads that leaves the listener equally pleased with the prospect of continuing to rise towards the ocean surface of more overtly dance-focused music or returning to the sea floor of ambient and post-minimalism that Edward and the listener met at two-thirds of an hour prior.

Edward's "Turning" feels very much like a kindred album to Map.ache's 2020 "What Does That Mean?" and is a powerful continuation of the Giegling artists’ response to the changes that the pandemic has brought to our lives, but the chapter is clearly not yet finished being written, and I am sure others will soon discuss that particular topic at great length elsewhere.

Are the tracks mixed into each other, or just short takes?