Hans-Joachim Roedelius & Tim Story - Inlandish (2008)

Stately, melancholy ambience from two masters.  The story (no pun intended) goes that the younger, American musician first met one of his biggest German heroes in 1983, and ended up staying with him in Austria for a week.  Story & Roedelius wouldn't collaborate until over a decade later, but when they did they made a handful of albums together, of which Inlandish was the third.

It's a gorgeous album that bears all the Roedelius hallmarks you'd expect: sparse, affecting melodies on piano cocooned in gentle ambient waftings and burblings.  In this case, the pair worked from Roedelius' piano sketches, with Story filling out the backgrounds.  Occasional beat-driven tracks like Downrivers and Riddled keep a bit of energy going, but mostly this is mellow meditativeness par excellence.

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P.S. - Florian Schneider-Esleben, 1947-2020
R.I.P to one of the founders of electronic music's Big Bang, who has died of cancer at the age of 73. To celebrate Kraftwerk at the outset of their classic era, head over to Electronic Orgy, where they recently re-upped one of the most astonishing concert bootlegs ever taped.  Or hang out here and enjoy Electric Cafe from 80s Kraftwerk, when their contemporaries had began to catch up on them but they still had plenty to offer; or a recent celebration of early Kraftwerk performed by Zeitkratzer.