Christopher Rau – Two

Label: Smallville Records – SMALLVILLE CD06
Format: CD, Album
Country: Germany
Released: Nov 5, 2012
Genre: Electronic
Style: Deep House

Christopher Rau's sophomore album arrives two years after the assured debut Asper Clouds — idiosyncratic enough to stand him out from the crowd while immediately classic, that record set him well on the way to becoming the deep house figure he now is. Two reflects the direction of his intervening EPs on Mule, Pampa and Never Learnt, pushing further into scattered percussive patterns and ever more tightly programmed analogue trickery — and the results are at their most compelling in the album's second half, where the kinetic energy of the opening tracks gives way to deeper, more streamlined grooves.

Weird Alps is the standout — an economical Omar-S style workout where a sad, arpeggiated horn roams free amongst sandy, uninterrupted deep house beats and a feathery, ever-ticking hi-hat. Simple yet effective, effortless in the best sense. Girl follows with a coarse clap that opens and closes like Villalobos at his most hypnotic, magical fairground melodies fluttering somewhere off in the distance. Sound Shake could have been culled from the Asper sessions given its smooth, foggy deepness. Throughout, there is a real-world quality to the melodies and samples — even when the beats are brash and the percussion prickly, waify little details surreptitiously steal the mind and romance the heart with imagined nostalgia. Above most in its field, and worth your time entirely.