The Latest From Thinner/Autoplate

I think it’s rather odd that it was only last year that I began seriously exploring various netlabels as new avenues for discovering music. I mean, I’ve been writing about music on-line for years, and have tried to keep abreast of various trends, but the whole netlabel thing completely slipped past me. But I’ve since then been trying to make up for lost time, and one of the best netlabels I’ve discovered so far, at least for electronic/ambient/avant-garde music, is the Germany-based Thinner/Autoplate.

This is where I first discovered Off The Sky (which, if you’ve done any reading of Opus over the past year or so, you know that I’ve become quite infatuated with). And since then, they’ve done a pretty good job of releasing solid music almost every month. Their latest releases definitely seem to carry on the tradition. The latest Thinner release is Das Kraftfuttermischwerk’s Eingang Nach Drauen. The release contains many elements common too electronic music, such as dubby undercurrents, but what I’ve listened to so far also showcases a nice, melancholy atmosphere to it.

The latest from Autoplate (Thinner’s more abstract-oriented sublabel), however, is what’s really got me intrigued. The website describes Emil Klotzsch’s Tiefe Berge as “Humid Scottish Highlands Ambience.” I’ve only had a chance to listen to the full thing myself, but what I’ve heard so far is essentially an audio documentary of Klotzsch’s trips through Scotland, an attempt to sonically portray the beauty, barrenness, and bleakness of Scotland’s highlands through field recordings and ambient textures.

Or, as the folks at Thinner/Autoplate explain it:

The intention behind Tiefe Berge was for Emil Klotzsch to create a sonic exploration of this cinematic area of the world. Therefore, he traveled to the Highlands by himself to feel the power and myth of the rural northern part of Scotland. The result is a an audio exploration of the vast flora and fauna that the majestic Scottish highlands offer, recreated by many field recordings taken, who form the plateau of these takes. Streaming water, the whistling of the cold and foggy wind, its cruising birds around who are barely whistling, the distant grumbling of clashing rain clouds and on top of all these particular moments of majestic silence — all of these original recordings redraw accurate layers of the true Scottish Highlands experience viewed from the eyes of an artist who is looking for solitude.

It’s definitely a recording I plan to spend more time with in the coming weeks.

As with all of Thinner/Autoplate’s releases, both of these releases are entirely free downloads.

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