Just like last year’s album Gestalt, Wirkung is a collection of laconic (2-3 minutes) and purposely reserved pieces. There are no drums at all, and the arrangements themselves are extremely minimalistic, consisting of mere 2-3 parts. Nevertheless, a modest set of expressive means does not hurt the expressiveness and the diversity of the music itself; this charming simplicity has something of Erik Satie and Harold Budd. And if Gestalt was a completely introverted and a “nightly” kind of ambient record, then Wirkung” is a much more “morning” one. It has a lot more optimism, dynamics, and the sound palette is significantly more rich. It features a dissected piano (the track Wirkung sounds a lot like a lost B-side from the album Ypsilon that came out last year), a harpsichord from somewhere around the times of Tides (Komposition No.1), some rough glitch-spiced pads (Noondt, Innerst), the signature Arovanian keys with an infinitely long decay (Find and Tri I are reminiscent of the album Atol Scrap). At times, there are so few notes that it is as if all of the beauty and the drama were practically hidden inbetween the lines, inside the pauses, rustling and subtle echoes. It is hard to say that these musical pieces open some kinds of new horizons, and yet it is simply impossible not to get charmed by them.
