After
Moderat announced their indefinite hiatus in 2017,
Sascha Ring went back to his solo career as
Apparat.
LP5 is the follow-up to 2011's
The Devil's Walk,
Ring's most song-oriented solo work, rather than the last album to bear
Apparat's name, 2013's more challenging
Krieg und Frieden (Music for Theatre). The title of
LP5 ostensibly nods to
Autechre's 1998 full-length, which it doesn't resemble in the slightest.
Ring has stated that his experience with
Moderat, which ended up touring major venues, inspired him to think big with his own music, but here he refrains from writing quirky, crowd-pleasing electro-pop tunes like
Moderat's "Bad Kingdom." Like all of
Apparat's albums since 2003's
Duplex,
LP5 is filled with live instrumentation as well as
Ring's fragile, yearning vocals, which are refreshingly not over-emotive. The songs seamlessly blend electronic and acoustic textures, with waves of
Fennesz-like guitar fuzz lapping over dusty pianos, swelling strings, and glowing horns. The drums often sound played rather than programmed, and they range from the drum'n'bass-like patter of "Dawan" to the post-dubstep skip of "Heroist."
Ring lets the songs flow as they need to, going by feeling rather than shoehorning them into conventional song structures. "Caronte" begins with ear-perking staccato strings that are striking but not too dramatic, and just as its seems like it's building up to a soul-stirring climax, it curiously dissolves into lush strings and intimate acoustic guitar plucking for a brief moment. Then it starts building up again, with
Ring's modulated vocals singing either "never find" or "never fight," and it percolates into a more intense, bass-smeared beat. Closing number "In Gravitas" has perhaps the greatest contrast between dynamics, beginning with two minutes of free-floating space and
Ring's passionate vocals before a shuffling beat eventually slams in, forging a path that ends up at a bizarre spoken word passage. As expected from
Apparat,
LP5 is an ambitious, inventive album which runs on its own intuition, fusing studio wizardry with honest expression to frequently thrilling results. ~ Paul Simpson