The Exterior Zone Album

This album contains a number of instrumentals that, whilst not entirely dissimilar to several previous cryptic scenery releases, have some shifts in emphases. The guitar parts have been recorded using an amplifier, which is something I haven’t done in ages, as far as I can recall. In addition to that, although there is still a fair amount of reverb on many tracks, I have toned it down a bit. Furthermore, some of the programmed drum parts sound slightly more organic, ’real drums’-ish.

As to the musical content, there are more tracks with different parts, rather than focussing on the exploration of a single, slowly developing ’A’ part by incrementally making the atmosphere more complex. And I have tried to deliberately allow for the use of an odd number of bars in chord cycles here and there. These changes might or might not be noticeable when listening to the music, but they were apparent to me when composing and recording it.

There are (I suppose) elements of Ambient Music, Electronic Rock, Minimalism and Minimal Music… and there is one long track, which is – to my ears, anyway – very influenced by what has become known as the Berlin School of the 70s. (Having lived in Berlin for so long, I thought I might as well have some fun and give it a try.)

Listening back to some of the material, I somehow felt reminded of cryptic scenery’s 2002 album ’Four Crescent Figures’ in some places. Maybe ’The Exterior Zone’ sounds very different in many respects, but I think it shares an openness and eclecticism with the old album that I was happy to notice.

And like that 2002 album there is a track directly inspired by the loss of a close family member. So I dedicate this album to the memory of my father.

Christian H. Soetemann