Peter Seiler - Sensitive Touch (1987)

Peter Seiler's follow-up to his solo debut Flying Frames (posted last week) saw him develop a more ambitious and symphonic style.  According to the liner notes, Seiler delivered the master tapes for Sensitive Touch with the sly declaration "Warning - this is not New Age music!", and much of it is closer to his prog roots than anything on his debut, particularly the early highlight Mountain Peaks (Four Movements).

Elsewhere, a couple of really nice mellow tracks (Still The Same Sun and Reef Moods) show a bit of a Vangelis influence, and were highlights for me.  The only minor misstep comes with the title track - it just outstays its welcome a bit, there's still some interesting electronic effects in the background & intro.  As Flying Frames hadn't been released internationally at this point, the Sensitive Touch CD repeats two selections from it as "taster" bonus tracks - I've just left them in for the sake of completeness, and because they're (Grönland and Serengeti) my favourite tracks from Flying Frames.

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Peter Seiler - Flying Frames (1986)

Debut album from German electronic musician and composer Peter Seiler, who was in a prog band called Tritonus in the 70s before moving into scoring for radio, film & TV among other things.  He then began a solo career with Klaus Schulze's Innovative Communication label (although Schulze was no longer involved in running it by this point).

The good old Yamaha DX7 tops the list of Seiler's extensive hardware in the liner notes, which describe the music as "inspired by Peter's various travel impressions: landscapes, flights, city life".  So you can guess what kind of bright, punchy 80s electronica to expect here, especially in the uptempo tracks - a lot of this would make very good library music, an impression certainly not dispelled by that cover art.  My favourite track is probably Serengeti, nicely evocative of its title.

There's also quite a few guest musicians sprinkled around to keep things varied.  Sky Sight adds an orchestral string section to a Jean-Michel Jarre-esque melody; the lead guitar on Flugansichten and violin on Olli's Theme are nice touches; and the synths take a back seat for the gentle Cloudfields to feature piano, acoustic guitar and flute.   More from Seiler next week.

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