Florian T M Zeisig - Coatcheck (2020)

Absorbing dub techno and ambient impressionism from Berlin-based coatroom operator and producer Florian T M Zeisig - a strong look for Huerco S./Pendant/Perila fiends and tipped if yr into the Chain Reaction >> Jan Jelinek >> Sferic >> Topdown Dialectic axis.

A student of Alva Noto, one half of OCA and an active installation artist, Florian Zeisig brings a sensitive mix of textural ambiguity and artfully expressive sound design to his behind-the-scenes tales from the cloakroom - a story of being at the club, but not quite in it - apt for our time. It’s a tale that's heavily indebted to smoked-out Chain Reaction listening rituals - think the first time you heard Vainqueur’s ‘Elevations’ stoned out of your mind, or else a flash to our current universe where all that’s left of the club is a vague memory of thuds smudged in your padded cell.

Switching to something more heavy-lidded on the middle-distance ambient stare and swirling voices of ‘Been Listening A Lot’, he basically makes a bed out of atmospheric pads with ‘Ambient Middle Part’, where we sink into heartbeat thrums and amniotic washes with ‘Straining To Hear’ before swaddling us to smug satisfaction with ‘Only Textures’.

It’s a sound that’s been done many times before - but here handled with a narrative dexterity that made us go in for a second serving the minute it was over.