vierzig skizzen is the project of Daniel Stuhr, from Kiel in Germany, the latest artist to join the always reliable Lily Tapes and Discs family. Travels in Public is the project’s first full-length, an album that explores the nervous hope and deep-seated fear that one feels when moving away from home.
Like most Lily Tapes releases, vierzig skizzen isn’t constrained by traditional song structures. Travels in Public is all atmosphere and texture, sonic representations of feelings that would otherwise be impossible to communicate. Lily Tapes describe it as “a lonesome soundtrack to what we see when unknown surroundings make us feel like spectators to our own lives”, and description is holds up when listening to this collection of evocative songs.
The album opens with ‘bayside’, a piece of quietly transcendental ambient drone. It evokes the sensation of riding public transport and being insulated inside a quiet little bubble within the rush of the city, where you start to notice every small detail and things take on grand and melancholy meaning—where you can almost feel the tangible sensation of time passing and the world spinning.
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‘summer storms’ has a latent ominousness, like the dark clouds of the title gathering on the horizon, windows beading with humidity in herald of the oncoming storm. This is followed by ‘passwords’, a song both calm and meandering, an impressionistic cityscape filled with the slow and sad hum of activity. Finale ‘deal’ feels like something of a departure from the rest of the record, the short song lit up with sparkling synths, indecipherable vocals mumbling in the background.
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travels in public is a lovely collection of songs, capturing that sense of wonder and incomprehensibility of walking through a new city, passing the rich and varied lives of countless other human beings, and struggling to make sense of just how and why events have conspired to lead us right to this very spot.
You can get it now on cassette from the Lily Tapes and Discs Bandcamp page, or as a name-your-price download from the vierzig skizzen Bandcamp.
