Christian Loeffler’s obsession with nature is clear. It’s cited as his primary influence. His label, Ki, is named for the Japanese word for tree. Earlier this year he released a single entitled “Aspen” for the vegetation near his home in North Germany. The artwork that’s adorned most Ki Recordings releases since its inception in 2009 have all included some kind of pastoral, organic decoration. And on Loeffler’s full-length LP, A Forest, the music itself breathes with the kind of loosely organized, incidental beauty one might find in an actual forest – light and life scattered in gorgeously accidental designs.
During A Forest‘s recording, Loeffler was living in Usedom, a well-vacationed island on the Baltic Sea. His wanderings through the neighboring woods toward the sea near his remote home became the atmospheric and textural basis for A Forest. There may also be a number of recordings from those wanderings that made it onto the record as well. Loeffler is by no means the first techno producer to find overt inspiration in nature’s comforts, away from the more confined parts of human society. Forests aren’t a new setting either. Trentmøller’s The Last Resort and Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas project spring to mind. But it’s probably not too much of a generalization to say techno’s current atmospheric interests tend toward abstract, dark, oppressive, and often urban place settings (though there are exceptions). A Forest can often be melancholic and intangible, but it shines with a colorful vibrancy that’s a refreshing change from the current crop of techno producers.
A Forest is rich with cascading dewdrop textures and unwieldy music box melodies. It exists largely in the upper register – untethered, mechanical synth stabs and shuddering, evergreen synths gliding along a smooth subterranean base. The record is stuffed with minute peripheral intricacies like rustling leaves, clanking chains, roiling gusts, and rhythmic, hollowed-out wooden jounces. Pantha Du Prince’s Black Noise strikes me as very much a peer to A Forest in its overall tone, but whereas Hendrik Weber seems to paint scenic naturalism in grandiose strokes, Loeffler’s compositions feel isolated and sheltered, tracing small secluded portions of the landscape one track at a time.
And despite his naturalistic inclinations, Loeffler works with a distinctly human hand. It’s clear the German producer takes to his setting without removing himself from it unlike many other electronic producers forging into the wilderness. It also helps that the album includes its fair share of vocal samples and hand claps, as well as three vocal features. The first of these, “Eleven,” functions as an honest-to-god tech house single, getting a breathy turn from vocalist Mohna over a minimal, bouncy rhythm, some waterlogged percussion, and a number of warped, tinkling bell samples. But despite the vocals and its standalone impact, the track doesn’t waver from A Forest‘s singular atmospheric landscape.
A Forest is a lively tech house record that functions best in isolation. These aren’t dance floor heaters or mountainous, naturalistic distillations. Loeffler’s vision is personal and introverted. It’s intricate and soulful. The record might be a beautiful accompaniment to a walk through an actual forest. It captures its inspiration perfectly. Techno is often idealistic and anti-solipsistic. A Forest doesn’t exist in antithesis to those qualities or anything, but it’s nice to hear something that’s so one-to-one with its creator’s experience without it being overly idealized or larger-than-life. A Forest is quiet and private, yet beautiful and deep.
