SooL

We Say...

Review by Andy Battaglia

After a string of albums that have billowed and swelled in various ways, Ellen Allien sounds markedly minimal on Sool — but not necessarily “minimal” in the way it’s come to mean in so much 21st-century techno and house. Whereas minimalism stands as a matter of particular rhythmic priorities and detailed sound-design in dance clubs from to Seattle to Berlin, on Sool it’s more simply a matter of measurably less sound. Most of the tracks have something like a techno gait moving beneath them, but none could work as a banging anthem. Instead, Allien sounds more invested in moods and atmospheres — the kinds of ticks and textures that haunt dance music and haunt all the more when placed so nakedly in the foreground.

“Einsteigen” starts with delicate chimes mixing with a voice announcing a Berlin train station (sure to thrill anybody who festishizes that German paradise of techno culture). “Caress” follows with a creeping beat and a female voice draped in folds over synths that skulk and sigh. The cut-up voices are a hallmark of the “sound poet” AGF, a collaborator on Sool whose presence can be heard in the stretched and abstracted electronics of tracks like “Ondu.” Otherwise, the album hits hardest on tracks like “Elphine” and “Its,” which crack open the techno vault and rummage through a rash of mechanical sounds that sound nonetheless moody and human. The relative quietude represents a surprising tack for Allien, but when it swells into a gorgeous hymn like “Frieda,” it’s easy to hear why she was attracted to fleshy simplicity.