Catalog Number: PM03
Release Date: June 13th, 2019
Formats: Digital, Cassette
Edition: 50 SOLD OUT
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On Reveal, Sascha Bachman, aka HAND, has created a unique balance of classic ambient music, sounds and musical figures that touch the edge of melody and harmony, and a just-above-subliminal pulse. These elements come together in a sound world that is in turn comforting and haunting. Reveal's surface may be gentle, but the music reaches deep, starting with the stratospheric heights of “God Only Knows,” to the galactic distances of “Into the Void,” and concluding with “Poem for Tanja,” a nostalgic poem for magnetic tape.
Bachmann’s bio harkens back to the ‘80s, when he spent time listening on his father’s Tesla tape recorder. The analog medium is fundamental to his music making—in performance he uses a tape machine and plays Super 8 movies. About his unique approach to rhythm in electronic music, he explains: "I have a professional drummer background and for a long time I was only concentrated on my career as a sideman. But growing up in Berlin and not also getting into electronic/ambient music is simply not possible. So this kind of music was always in my mind.
"One day I decided to give it a try and quit some bands to focus on research for how I can create my own sound. By that time I was listening a lot to William Basinski, Basic Channel, and GAS. I was always thinking, how would Basinski sound if he made music for the dance floor?”
To Bachman, "GAS sounded like slower pitched magnetic tape." His answer was to work with tape loops, the source material of Reveal's sun-like glow.
HAND’s combination of enveloping soundscape and pulse reaches into the listener’s body. The style came to Bachman as a question: "What is the first sound we ever heard? What do we listen to in our mother's belly during pregnancy? In my imagination we heard a big pulse from the heartbeat surrounded by a droned sound from the outer world. I like this picture in my head. It is a perfect concept for ambient music, because I want to make the listener calm, and the sound like in a mother’s belly works on various levels to comfort and calm.”
Recorded at Pionierpalast Berlin
Written, produced & mixed by Sascha Bachmann
Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studio
Artwork by John Whitlock
