A jaw dropping selection of IDM from this German duo!
Doctor Trance | MA, United States | 05/13/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Ellen Allien, DJ, techno artist, producer, and founder of the BPitch Control record label out of Berlin, teams up with another German producer and artist, Apparat. Prior to Ochestra of Bubbles, Allien's last release Thrills produced some excellent tech house and minimal tracks, but also had too many stale spots for a 10 track album. It wasn't quite as good as her stunning album before that, Berlinette. Now this teaming with Apparat has brought together one of the best electronic artist albums I've ever heard.
Right from the first two standout singles off the album, Turbo Dreams with it's pulsating beats and flowing horn, to Ellen's pop-like vocals on possibly the best track on here, Way Out, you know this is going to be something special. Track 3 was a little downgrade, with it's building strings sounding like a horror or war movie score, but tracks 4-10 were just incredible, eye-popping slices of techno that kept me spellbound through the start of each new track.
The one track voiced by Apparat, Leave Me Alone, is the low point of the album, with some awkward sounding vocals meshed with a very cheesy pop like melody. Right after that is the one boring instrumental on the CD, Edison, a crackily minimal track which literally goes nowhere. The CD closes with an incredible breathy downtempo vocal track sung by breathy, German accented Ellen, which I could have taken a 10 minute dose of instead of the 4:58 time.
I had sampled each track online because after Thrills, I thought it might be a case where I only wanted to download some of the tracks, but when I heard each of the tracks, they all sounded so good I just had to get the whole thing and I am glad I did, as I got 11 out of 13 solid electronic tracks.
FYI: There's already two good remixes out there of Turbo Dreams, plus and elongated track of the album version, and an upcoming remix of Way Out by Robag Wruhme that I just heard of sample of and I'm dying to get my hands on!"
Two great sounds that sound great together
somethingexcellent | Lincoln, NE United States | 05/12/2006
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Last year, Apparat (aka Sascha Ring) released the excellent Silizium EP, which contained the song "It's Gonna Be A Long Walk," one of my favorite songs of 2005. Although I wasn't completely excited about Ellen Allien's last album Thrills, she's been a consistently exciting artist, and I was curious to see what the two would cook up together when it was announced they'd be releasing an album together.
Orchestra Of Bubbles is the result of their efforts, and other than a couple small lags, it's one of the more exciting electronic releases that I've heard in some time. The work of the two artists seems to fit together and overlap just about perfectly as razor sharp beats and cracking production mixes with some nice textures and vocal-driven tracks for a consistently fun album.
"Turbo Dreams" opens the release strong as a gurgling synth bass flows underneath some scorching guitar-esque riffs and crisp beats that snap and pop in all the right places. "Way Out" follows, and it finds Allien adding vocals over a blistering, electro-tinged track that's downright poppy as it progresses through a couple brisk verses and a soaring guitar closing section.
A large part of the album is instrumental, and while the duo manages to keep things together most of the time, they seem to lose focus in a couple places, as on the old-school pitch-bending weirdness of "Do Not Break" and the five-minute "Under," where almost three-fourths of the track passes before much of anything happens. Apparat takes lead vocals on only a single track on the disc, and from the sounds of "Leave Me Alone," he should have maybe done it a bit more often, as the string-laced, lurching track is one of the most outstanding on the album. The short "Metric" is just as solid, tying string stabs with brisk, percolating electro production. An excellent album, Orchestra Of Bubbles should appeal to fans of either artist, or those looking for a slab of brisk electronic pop to blast this summer.
(from almost cool music reviews)"
Track Listings (13) - Disc #1