„All stories are love stories.“
Robert McLiam Wilson (from the novel Eureka Street)
„All Stories Are True.“
John Edgar Wideman (From the story collection All stories are true)
The cover art for Wandermüde shows the gloves from a space suit placed on a mantelpiece, each palm facing decorative wallpaper. If there is a story here, it’s one that your mind instantly tells you, when your eyes see the juxtaposition and try to make sense of it. Or maybe you just get questions, like „are these gloves antiques placed there for fun in a bohemian living room from the past/future?“, or „are these gloves the gloves of someone who returned from space?“ or „are these gloves the gloves of someone about to go to space tomorrow“. Space. You’re already in space. Space is within you and without you. The gloves and the mantelpiece will soon be dust.
The first and most important thing to say about Wandermüde is that it is a work of great beauty. It may not be the most accessible of records – there are sustained notes, Ligeti-stylee ghostisms, corridor vibes, and in places a sense of epiphany and strangeness not seen outside of the closing scenes of Tarkovsky’s film Stalker or Russell Hoban’s novel Fremder. (I sent my copy of Fremder to Hoban’s publisher with a request for him to sign it. They said „sure“. Nothing came back. I emailed to ask what had happened. They replied that my hero was unwell. Nothing came back. My copy of Fremder is lost in space. My hero lives on.)
No point getting into the musicology of Wandermüde. Have a read at this Guardian article on accelerationism, (it’s a read alright!), take a breath, then listen to Deceleration. Or think of Florian Fricke and Popol Vuh and then check out Dark Pastoral. Wandermüde, like Fricke’s work, isn’t confined to some genre idea of prog or rock or drone/ambient. It moves in all directions.