The shiver shiva of close-mic(ed) debris greets you on “Empfang”, an inky shoal of suggestiveness mauled in mysterious mantras as the flare of a sleeping beast’s nostrils dusts the air in drowsy electronica at the opening of Die Wilde Jagd‘s Haut LP.
Slowly, a faint tapping rhythm rises on though to luminously dance, percussively shot with tambourined loose change. A weird motorik peppers the beat, and Ran Levari’s drums feel incisive, lanterned in electronic apparitions. The shifting distance pebbling into a very deep elevator shaft, a muted rub transformed, reshaped on the recoil. Sonics that untangle into the album’s first surprise, a crystalline acoustic number in which guest vocalist Nina Siegler shines, throws the record wide open.
An album high that bleeds straight into the Amon Düül II-like flavours of “Himmelfahrten”, an absolute killer track, full of psych shadows and howling forestry. The measured thrill of Sebastian Lee Philipp’s vocals dopplegangered by Nina’s textural differences, the German lyrics cantering slowly in a rich rainbow of echoing melancholics. Its ellipticals light up your mind as the fireworks of spiking percussives and burning guitar lay themselves down in a flowering meadow refrain, leaving you to stare up at a spinning sky.
The albums finale, “Sankt Damin”, flaunts with song-form once again, maybe less immediate as “Himmelfahrten”, but none the less potent. The wind-swept introduction opening up to a Neubauten-like medivealism that steals you in locomotive chug . A helixed whole faintly reminiscent of “Salamandrina”’s tilted glow accented in the odd bicycle bell, its greased linguistics Sim-sala-bim-ing to hummed accompaniment and swishing tides. The shingled crash of the song’s demise savouring the return to the slumbering signatures of the first track. Die Wilde Jagd really weave something quite magical here.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
