Linienbusse

• Track Listing

In the first collaboration between City Centre Offices and Germany's cult label Source, Studio Pankow is the mixed venture of three musicians who have been pivotal to the development of electronic music: David Moufang (Move D), Jamie Hodge (Born Under a Rhyming Planet, Conjoint) and Kai Kroker (Rawell). Between them the three have had releases on labels as influential and diverse as Warp, Ninja Tune, Plus 8, Rising High, Plug Research, WMF, Fax, Reflective and, most importantly, David Moufag's seminal Source Records. Between Moufang's deeply emotive emissions as Move D and Hodge's organic techno for Richie Hawtin's Plus 8 imprint, both artists created a new electronic variant that acted as a missing link between the groundbreaking constructions that typified Detroit techno and the artificial intelligence movement pioneered by the Warp label. The tracks that feature on this album were recorded in three sessions over a time period of more than four years. The three artists, each residing at a different location, would converge at Kai's studio Pankow and start improvising. This bunkered-down intensity is ever-present on Linienbusse, at times nodding towards their familiar fascination with beats and hazy strings, at others developing the session into an effervescent glow of minimalism and velvet ambience. On the incredible title track, for instance, this sumptuous reduction features a solitary piano that acts as a sparkling, reflective counterweight to the celluloid and fuzzy transmissions that lie beneath. With a title that roughly translates as "regular busses," you get the feeling that somewhere outside these artists' collaborative space, life very gently slowed down until each single detail and intonation of mundane existence became perfectly clear, captured here for posterity.

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