Where You Go I Go Too

Following up 2006's collection of singles in `It's a Feedelity Affair', Lindstrøm is back with his first album proper. Well known for his epic and ultra melodic disco, Lindstrøm has opted to take a far more progressive route by churning out only 3 tracks across the albums 55 minutes. After releasing a string of critically acclaimed 12" singles, his sound coined a term the press called `space disco' and a movement that the likes of `diskJokke' would emulate. Well known for his remixes of LCD Soundsystem, Roxy Music, Franz Ferdinand and The Killers, he has previously released a collaboration with Norwegian DJ and friend Prins Thomas and will release another this autumn. On this epic release, Lindstrøm extends his minimalist Norwegian-space disco across a far wider gamut. Similar in vein to Manual Gottsching's dance-music initiating `E2-E4', stretched-synths extend and overlap infinitely, continuously warping to maximize the euphoric resonance of the sound. In the midst of this psychedelically morphing and heavily layered body of electro, melodic motifs and retro disco flourishes from the Giorgio Moroder school of sound occasionally rise to the fore. Like attempting to play a late-Nineties trance cassette that's started to melt in a conked out cassette player, Lindstrøm's newly-stretched out sound progressively perpetuates; his feverish, electrobeat-driven pieces blossoming with kaleidoscopic endeavor. The new freedom that has come with a lack of time constraint has led to more fulfilling pieces that meander through narrative peaks and troughs and engage vividly with the listener.

The epic title track `Where You Go I Go Too' is a pure sonic encapsulation of what a jam session between Manual Gottsching and Giorgio Moroder would have sounded like if they were both blasted on LSD and had some really tasty analogue equipment to play with. `Grand Ideas' takes a far darker route and appears to be more focused at extracting the most euphoric elements of techno. Heavily processed melodics are painstakingly fragmented and micro-arranged to create a vibrating backbone that is augmented by a host of welcome turbulence ranging from tribal percussives to dark howling synths. The result is an otherworldly glimpse at darkcore space-disco in its element. `The Long Way' home commences as an atmospheric electro-ambient journey into the electronic cosmos but unfortunately becomes slightly unhinged with the addition of syrupy disco-funk passages that sound a bit like Dimitri from Paris has hijacked the set. As the track progresses, these elements sit uncomfortably with rather delicious bouts of micro-techno motifs that flutter incessantly like a drove of insect heartbeats.

The length and heavy layering of the tracks dictate that this is not an album which you will hear plundered on mainstream media. Instead, it is music created for contemplative journeys, both physical and mental. Lindstrøm himself notes that "I wanted to sound a bit dramatic and like a long travel. All the tracks are between 10 and 30 minutes long which might be a challenge for some people to listen to from beginning to end. It's perfect for a long walk with headphones or when travelling by train or airplane". We couldn't agree more and admire Lindstrøm for shunning mainstream constraints to fully explore his sound, an undertaking which has led to him building up ecstatic soundscapes of warm, fuzzy and totally euphoric space-disco. (KS)

For fans of: diskJokke, Luomo

Imagine If Jean Michel Jarre really had the funk gene or was more interested in partying than chilling out then I think Where You Go I Go Too is a credible approximation of what he would sound like.
Lindstrøm is the sobriquet of Norwegian producer Hans-Peter Lindstrøm and he has remixed work by artists as diverse as Franz Ferdinand , Roxy Music , Imagination and LCD Soundsystem but on this album he creates three tracks covering 55 minutes of what has been dubbed space disco.
I can see why too as there is definite groove to this music . It is gloriously fluid with gyrating flights of fancy but with a rhythmic under pulse that keeps its metaphorical feet glued to the ( no doubt chrome and glass) dance floor. You could zero gravity dance to this stuff but it's also great just to listen to. It transports you somewhere else.
This album reminds me in many ways of hugely under rated dance pioneers Fluke who have a similar sinuous grace to their music . Though it must be said they never produced a track as elongated as the knocking on thirty minute title track . This track opens up with ambient found sounds -wave , wind that sort of thing - before percolating in esoteric keyboards .Once it hit it's groove it circulates poly-rhythmic errrr rhythms over which juddering keyboard refrains swish in and out . It build these layers up before ushering it all done and starting again with a more delicate tippy toe arrangement. It's not massively original but by god it's great to listen to.
"Grand Ideas " is like the Disco Evangelists doing the harder edged techno tones of Plastikman . "The Long Way Home" is bit prissy for five minutes before it mutates into a glistening theme for a show from the eighties involving white suits, big hair and perma tans.
Written produced arranged performed and mixed by one man ( that's why he won't have the time to shave or get a decent haircut ) Where You Go To I Go Too reminds the listener of too many other acts to be accepted as the work of a true auteur or original but like I said before it is terrific to listen to -especially if you are doing something else like the housework or writing a review -both of which I have done while listening to this album. Who really cares if it recycles so many old ideas when the end result is as good as this and his taste in influences is impeccable.

It really is as if punk never happened. Norwegians with facial hair taking the likes of Manuel Gottsching, Klaus Schulze and Giorgio Moroder as their inspiration produce epic albums of cosmic trance with 30 minute long tracks and get this, happen to be horribly fashionable at the same time, getting the chance to remix the likes of Madonna and DJ at hip clubs throughout the world. Not only are they reinventing trance, slowing it down to a more preferable speed but they're making those older gurus of the synthesizer acceptable once again. It's as if two of the most unhip genres have been spliced together, two negatives making a positive.

The emergence of the "cosmic disco" movement over the past few years is indicative of a divergence from the increasingly minimal aspect of electronic dance music, but also arguably signals the wish to go back a time more irreverent and ultimately less abstract. Mr Lindstrom has taken all his influences, like Cerrone, Schulze and Gottsching and made a slick dancefloor album that is pretty much as one might expect listening to those records and applying more modern studio sounds to it, namely a thumping backbeat. One could argue that "Where You Go I Go Too" perhaps alludes to this, as he doesn't really attempt to conceal anything, even chucking in a blatant riff from Cerrone that to his credit transforms into something quite dramatic with a lovely key change. As with his forebears he also makes no effort to edit or shorten any of the tracks, with the title track clocking in at 28 minutes, but in fairness this does have several "movements" which make up the whole song. "Grand Ideas" isn't really, although its insistent synth lead is ideal for a club. The final track sees him revert to Balearic-style 100 bpm grooves very much in the mould of Studio, and even stealing the intro from Tangerine Dream's Poland.

I will admit, as a fan of all things related to German synthesizer music from that hallowed period, that this album is very enjoyable to listen to, but deep down below the surface there's not a great deal to explore. The origins of the German kosmische movement are much deeper than a mere desire to make music to take drugs to, as they sought to remove the idea of rhythm as the central force of the music they were making. Lindstrom, like so many modern artists, takes and ultimately welds together those ideas with rhythm, but somewhere along the line he loses the soul of what the former was trying to achieve. Like so much of this style of music, it is successful in its immediacy but lacks depth on repeated listening.