Rolf Trostel - 1983 - Narrow Gate to Life

Quality: 4 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4.5 out of 5

Here's a slice of pretty obscure German electronica. I don't think it quite fits in with the Berlin school (don't you need lots of sequencers for that?), but it serves well as an early 80's update of the early Tangerine Dream sound (like Zeit). Rolf Trostel recorded this live in a Spanish cathedral according to the liner notes. This is a very ambient album and I believe we are getting some atmospheric sound from the location, just as Paul Horn used the Taj Mahal as his personal echo chamber.

While there are technically five parts to Trostel's piece, I've got it as one long track and it probably makes sense that way. Staying below the surface, Trostel builds layers of synthesized tones. You'll find plenty of evolving pads of sound at work. Of course, that makes this pretty much slightly disconcerting background music, but at least I like to make my apartment an aurally creepy place from time to time. Make sure to wait for the grand finale when Trostel manages to play more than one note every five seconds (along with a bit of sequencing, so maybe this segment is very Berlin School), not that he really needed to for the first forty minutes; this is deep in ambient territory.

This is a notable disc of droning, electronic atmospherics. If any music is going to alter the chemicals in your brain, Narrow Gate to Life should do the trick (although not quite as spectacularly as Coil's Time Machines).