Review: Apparat - LP5

Following the success of Sascha Ring's collaboration with Modeselektor to produce Electronic super-group Moderat, Ring regressed back into writing and producing his own material as Apparat after a period of relentless promotion and touring.

I once again give full credit to my discovery of Moderat and both separate artistic incarnations to my good friend and DJ Ben Wall (click for his Soundcloud page), and we were fortunate enough to have seen Modeselektor doing a DJ set at Fabric last year.

The results have been mixed, with 2011's A Devil's Walk being my own personal favourite. Near-perfect in its construction, the album follows a natural flow away from Ring's dance floor/IDM roots to a more deep and involved, textured downtempo listening experience, and is - to quote the Allmusic.com review - "the type of album that can be enjoyed on the surface, as pleasant background listening, or as a deeply immersive experience".

With all of these things known, LP5 was a much anticipated release for me.

What a total disappointment it has turned out to be, and despite not wanting to heartily agree with the detractors (including Resident Advisor's Will Lynch, who pulls no punches), this album is quite frankly a truly underwhelming listen.

I think it's the mixing of styles and lack of identity that does it for me; Ring tries to merge downtempo indie-pop with a sort of pseudo-ambient/introspective classical mash-up and....oh god....it's trying way too hard.

I tried to listen to it a few times to do it justice but just started skipping the tracks as it's just not a cohesive listening experience, and despite there being flashes of brilliance - namely parts of Dawan that glisten and glide effortlessly, the strings and samples merging neatly on Caronte - you also have the inexplicable last 60 seconds of In Gravitas with a poem recital that, ironically, gives zero gravitas to the track.

Ring has missed a beat (or twenty) here and has taken a massive step back in my estimation as an artist. His credentials as a producer are still in tact to an extent as stylistically the album at times sounds and feels good. But substance there ain't much of, and the mature listener demands more. Actually, we all do whether we're newcomer or old hand.

This old hand is moving on....quickly.

3/10

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