Schatterau: s/t LP

Here is the debut, self-titled album from Schatterau, a Hamburg-based three-piece band consisting of Daniel Jahn, Jonas Meyer and Tobias Rutkowski. Having dug out their old 4-track cassette recorder, the group turned it into an instrument, spending many hours exploring textures, creating countless tape loops and weaving them into this elegantly crafted inaugural work of 15 miniatures. At times, some of these fully realised, lo-fi ambient tales have a warm dream-like feel to them; the seemingly familiar then forms a powerful nostalgic statement. By contrast, some of those song-based vignettes tell poignant stories of blank space, self-alienation, impenetrable silence and growing up in the post-GDR era in a small town on the East German Baltic Sea.  The referents Schatterau grasps at seem to unravel as the journey goes by, making the listening of this impressively generous debut a playful experience, an inviting mellow walk down one and all’s inner memory lane.