By: Gareth Watkin
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Released on September 25, 2015 via Kranky
Musician and composer Steve Hauschildt offers his latest solo-album effort on the Kranky record label, titled Where All Is Fled. Taking inspiration from “surrealist landscape paintings, early alchemical emblems and recurring visions Steve had from dreams”, Hauschildt slowly builds up engrossing worlds of sound, presented through his own style of dreamy electronica music. There’s at times a wonderful beauty to the somewhat surrealist album effort being pushed out here, though at certain points it feels as though Hauschildt delves a little too much into the almost clichéd elements of the genre.
Where All Is Fled sees Hauschildt really involving himself in a visual world, taking influence from what is being seen in both a conscious and unconscious setting and translating it into an audio format, presented through his own understanding of ambient and electronic genres. Many of the tracks on the album follow very dreamy, sonic, almost new-age styles of instrumentals, showing a nice mix of different styles all being combined together into something cohesive and understandable.
Whilst Hauschildt has pushed out a strong album effort on Where All Is Fled it does sometimes feels as though certain points of the album let the whole thing down somewhat. Certain tracks seem to sound a little too similar to everything else within the genre, mostly using synthesizer elements in clichéd ways, rather than trying to bring more out of the actual genre through other means and techniques. Whilst there is a lot of creativity and talent being presented by Hauschildt on his latest effort, it does feel a little forced on certain occasions.
Perhaps more could have been done on Hauschildt’s part, though there are some lovely creative elements on Where All Is Fled that certainly make it a strong and enjoyable listening experience for those already familiar with the artist’s work. The surrealist landscapes conjured up in the mind of the listener suggest some wonderful effort on Hauschildt’s part to really express the ideas and concepts he is experiences in his life, giving the album effort a very nice strength that others within the genre may fail to live up to.
