Search - Donato Wharton :: Trabanten

Debut album by Donato Wharton. At the age of 18, he signed his first record contract and moved to Cologne. There, he became interested in digital music and started producing hip hop instrumentals for the up-and-coming scene of Stuttgart. Trabanten is Donato's first real solo effort -- an important move away from supporting other artists to focusing completely on his own ideas and visions. Donato, for whom Hendrix's Electric Ladyland is as important an influence as the more recent work from musicians like Vladislav Delay, Radiohead, Mogwai or jazz and hip hop in general, allows his tracks a lot of time and space to develop. He masters the more than difficult task of combining very detailed sound design with an ability to write wonderful, deep, intense songs. Doing so, he is one of few tellers of digital stories. And those stories are full of ideas. Without trying to describe the tracks in detail and bring up boring overused metaphors, Trabanten is the perfect soundtrack the time of the day when you go offline, switch off your phone and concentrating on music is all you really want to do. Trabanten requires attention, but the listener is rewarded. The way Donato Wharton pastes his sounds together, the way he gets all those noises out of his machines and, most importantly, the way he combines them with acoustic fragments and his guitar-playing, is unique. The fact that he is busy composing music for theater pieces makes complete sense.