Visiting Places is the fifth release in Strategic Tape Reserve’s Learning By Listening series, which has so far brought us volumes by Orca, Attack!, Goodparley & Poppy Jennings and bleed Air. The premise, as stated boldly by the label, is a “educational, instructive cassette series designed to bring the information of the world into your home, and your brain”.

No risk warning is attached, but it’s best to approach the series with a degree of casual circumspection. That includes, in this case, whether the artists themselves – Ulrich ‘Uli’ Federwisch (Secretary-General of the Prüm-Eupen Partnership For Success, previously CEO of an Euskirchen producer of parts used in industrial heat exchangers) and Chip Perkins (voice actor) – are even real. Googling their names yields nothing but nondescript corporate types and a litany of previous Strategic Tape Reserve releases, the cover for one of which (One Dazzling Moment) really needs to be seen to be believed.

Caution aside, with the Nordrhein-Westfalen duo at the helm, we find ourselves journeying across Central Europe courtesy of Federwisch’s synths and Perkins’ narration. Well, sort of. The topography may be representative of Central Europe, but what we encounter isn’t. Thanks to Perkins’ engaging, genial but slightly detached and occasionally trippy observations, we find ourselves on a fantastical voyage through strange and weird places, customs and events. A tricycle with one back wheel bigger than the other so that it can only move in a circle and the generous, congenial offer of pea soup by villagers (“They are just being polite; there is no pea soup.”) are just two of the oddest stories told. There is something vaguely reminiscent of the Welcome To Night Vale podcast here, of unfathomable practices, events and people that seem to exist sequestered away from the mundanity of homogenised real life and monoculture.

Federwisch’s synth accompaniments are full of Moog-y melodic wonder and immersive, intricate detail, evolving episodically depending on where we find ourselves on the journey. A section to accompany a section about a dangerous model railway museum exhibit might have been taken from a Radiophonic Workshop soundtrack for a radio play, all tiny sounds and details that eddy and spin around your ears. Other sections rely on crisp, unswerving but minimalist rhythms and brittle high-end tones, occasionally slipping into psychedelic ephemerality. A section at the start of ‘Part 2’ has the casual motorik pulse of vintage electronic pop, while the accompaniment to the aforementioned tricycle story has a breezy, lolloping, wonky circularity.

Five volumes in, it would appear that the key lesson emerging from the tongue-in-cheek Learning By Listening series and its skewed, surrealist sounds is that we should collectively challenge the excruciating seriousness normally attached to most electronic music.

Words: Mat Smith

Visiting Places by Uli Federwisch and Chip Perkins was released January 7 2022 by Strategic Tape Reserve.

(c) 2022 Further.