Starkstrom Compositions by Andres Franz Krause, recorded between 1999 and 2001 at a.f.r.i. studios in Cologne/Germany. Please listen in a room at a perceptual state.contact andres@softlmusic.com

Philip Sherburne:

++ A.F.R.I Studios, Goodbye If You Call That Gone (Lucky Kitchen) This makes the third and final release from Andrés Franz Krause under the A.F.R.I. Studios alias. While he's not a household name by any stretch of the imagination, Krause's work is slowly coming into a wider audience, many of whom have recently been enraptured by the organic electronics of the Softl Music label, which Krause runs alongside Tom Records' Tom Steinle. At times it doesn't seem as if anything is even happening on this album, but damned if it isn't one of the most powerful ambient recordings of 2001, the audio equivalent of light scraping across the mottled surface of water. The first track, nine minutes long, simply revolves in empty space, a single low tone paired with a single high tone in such a way that the harmonics kaleidoscope into a dizzying array of frequencies. The second track fleshes out that pattern, adding a dissonant hint of melody and vague percussive scrapings in the distance ‹ but even so, over the course of its seven minutes, there's barely any movement. On the final track, a resonant mass is wrapped in long sheets of throb and hum, where dissonant wrinkles snap open into bleach-white octaves: 13 minutes of illuminated bliss.
- January 4, 2002 ++ Winter Drones