Drawing from traditions of 20th century instrumental synthesizer music, Jonas Reinhardt represents a love affair between analog electronics, sweeping atmospherics, and driving motorik beats. Combined together, these elements bring the album's 13 pieces into focus as the soundtrack for an inner-eyelid space epic that never was. Inspired in equal measure by the natural beauty of his California coastal surroundings, continental European art-rock experimentation, and the freewheeling punk aesthetic of contemporary home studio recording, Jonas Reinhardt's music transcends it's influences to bring into being a work that's wholly new while referencing a celebrated aesthetic of the past. Armed with a battery of analog synthesizers and vintage drum machines, Jonas writes music that is at times stark and spare and at others lush and all-encompassing; all the while keeping an underlying rhythmic pulse just beneath the surface. Jonas describes his technique as 'a spirited conversation between man, machines, and the ecstatic truth of the chaotic unknown.' with this album, Jonas carefully constructs melodies and rhythmic foundations then pushes the limits of recording to the sonic fringes and beyond. The effect is a warm, hauntingly familiar sound bounded by unpredictability.
"If you can't take the weather, then you can't take my sweater with the loose threads. And I know I'm in danger of unraveling, but believe me I'm fine...
Split Foster - 13/Jan/2009
Jonas Reinhardt’s self-titled Kranky debut is a paean to the early age of synthesizer music, when Moogs were still a novelty and artists had only begu...
Bill Stewart - 05/Dec/2008
My iTunes genre tag for Jonas Reinhardt’s self-titled debut pompously insists on referring to the album as “Unclassifiable”, and you know what I part...
Clayton Purdom - 17/Sep/2008
This record is good. But first, we need to talk about Mass Effect.
One of the biggest and most deeply flawed releases of last fall’s big, deeply flaw...
Caroline Sullivan - 20/Jun/2008
A latter-day Osmonds, Kevin, Nick and Joe Jonas are a mop-topped Christian sibling act who command the loyalty of every pubescent girl in America (a t...