(2021) Tim Linghaus - memory sketches II  



Review:
With his second album of piano music, Memory Sketches II, German composer Tim Linghaus continues to use personal experience as a creative wellspring, the result a poignant rumination on memory and the past. He’s been prolific since the 2016 release of the EP Vhoir and debut full-length two years later Memory Sketches. Intense emotional expression permeated his 2019 follow-up We Were Young When You Left Home, which dealt with divorce from a child’s perspective, and does the same again on the new release. Jointly issued by the Japanese label Schole (physical) and Swedish imprint 1631 Recordings (digital), the release’s material is infused with nostalgia and longing for the innocence of youth. The edition to acquire is definitely the physical one as the CD comes in a lovely cardboard sleeve-box that includes cards displaying illustrations by Alex Hanke. An additional card showing recording details includes the dedication, “For Dad; To a time I miss,” which conveys a sense of the project’s tone, as do track titles such as “Running to School with S” and “Meet Me at Cemetery Hill.” They and others engender an image of a happy, carefree Linghaus growing up before life takes a turn. In his words, Memory Sketches II aspires to “give my most precious memories a shape because, otherwise, they might disappear together with the person, the scent, the sound or whatever it is that the memory is about.” Jean Marie Bo is credited with strings on the release, and Tobias Leon Haecker adds a smattering of saxophone to “Vergissmeinnicht,” but the album’s otherwise all Linghaus. Listeners conversant with the territory he’s operating within might reference figures such as Nils Frahm and Ólafur Arnalds, but while Linghaus’s music shares certain qualities with theirs, his stands apart for its personal dimension. While some of its eighteen instrumentals are pretty (“Running to School With S”), uplifting (“Maybe More Than You Knew”), and even triumphant (“In the Swirling Bubbles of the Lake I Saw Bonds and Molecules”), the prevailing mood is one of melancholy. In those instances the music is gentle, fragile, and pitched at the level of a whisper. Unfolding in a relaxed, stream-of-consciousness-like flow, the material exudes a dreamy quality that’s easy to surrender to. Accompanying piano are rustlings, vinyl crackle, and other ambient textural sounds that make the album feel more home-recorded and therefore all the more intimate. Synthesizer tastefully augments piano, and the four synthesizer-heavy “Repetitive School Daydream Sequence” interludes recall the style and tone of the material Cliff Martinez (and others) crafted for Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 film Drive. The hushed melodies streaming through representative pieces such as “Sommersturm,” “Because You Were the Universe,” and “We Were Made for Waving Into an Indefinite Future” are so touching you might find a tear or two welling up as they play. However much Linghaus’s softly shimmering music is grounded in personal history, it connects universally. Prepare to be entranced.



Track Listing:
1.Running To School With S 02:40
2.What Begins Must Also End 02:32
3.Sommersturm 02:38
4.Repetitive School Daydream Sequence, Pt. XII (Loud Youth, Quiet City) 01:05
5.Wild Dandelion 02:20
6.Aspirations And Rear Seats 01:41
7.Meet Me At Cemetery Hill 01:10
8.Repetitive School Daydream Sequence, Pt. IX (Obliterating Death In A Cosmic Environment) 00:51
9.Because You Were The Universe 04:01
10.Maybe More Than You Knew 02:54
11.Humming While You're Driving 02:35
12.Repetitive School Daydream Sequence, Pt. VII (Skipping Maths With S) 01:09
13.We Were Made For Waving Into An Indefinite Future 04:11
14.Vergissmeinnicht 05:40
15.In The Swirling Bubbles Of The Lake I Saw Bonds And Molecules 04:39
16.Repetitive School Daydream Sequence, Pt. V (Soaring To The Ceiling Of The Assembly Hall, Teary Eyes) 01:26


Media Report:
Genre: ambient
Country: Germany
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits