Stromboli – Antrieb [Random Numbers]

Drang (from the German, meaning impulse, push, persistence) is the new album by Stromboli (Maple Death Records, Oltrarno Recordings), the project of Bologna-based musician Nico Pasquini. Encompassing pulsating noise, propulsive percussion, as well as moments of ecstatic flight, the album depicts a post-human world of ambiguous sentience, where the distinction between humanity and simulation has become ill-defined and illusory. In this sense, ‘Drang’ represents a paradoxical vision of rarefied perception and indeterminate forms, vivid energy and unfamiliar resonances, bold revelation and concealed currents.

Across twelve works of experimental electronic composition, Stromboli constructs music of absorbing abstraction, emerging with a confluence of imposing industrial reverberation and otherworldly ambient on the extraordinary opener Stamina, before advancing into the immersive, cinematic murk of Aechmea and Fumo negli occhi, where the album evokes semblances of esoteric krautrock, if made for the year 2050. Elsewhere the hypnotic fourth world deconstructions of Hellblau, Tropico caustico and Synonyme shift into coruscating zones of abrasive impetus, suggesting imperfect traces within technological processes, while Antrieb conveys divergence through a mercurial collage of atmospheric tape loops and raw proto-techno.

Throughout these moments and beyond, Drang is both heavy hitting and enigmatic, an album that strikes an artful balance between elevation and discord, foregrounding original conceptions of noise, industrial and ambient, while incorporating reframed vestiges of dub, acid, drone, and electro. This exceptional sense of counterpoint and contemporary plurality continues into the album’s closing stages with Exochorda, which explores fragmentary incursions of cavernous, arrhythmic drums and radiant trails of ambient sound, before Continuo discontinuo closes proceedings with a subtle assemblage of gentle tone float, liquid FX, and subterranean distortion, transitioning from a series of implosions to a final beautiful dissolve.

Across a melee of aerial undulations, industrial debris, and autonomous circuitry, a remarkably distinct, cohesive sound materializes on Drang; a strong sense of arrangement and identity that threads these tracks together and marks the album out as one of Stromboli’s finest, most arresting works to date. Unravelling compelling dissonance and transcendent flow states out of conflicting elements and impulses, Stromboli creates an environment of astounding pressure and evocative lustre, affirming that in the post-human universe of DRANG, there’s plenty of life to be found.

Release date: 25th September, 2023.