Mask of the Maker

You’d be hard-pressed to find two musicians in San Francisco with a deeper love for vintage Krautrock than Jonas Reinhardt (a.k.a. Jesse Reiner) and Phil Manley (Trans Am, Life Coach, The F***ing Champs). Reinhardt’s fourth studio outing, Mask of the Maker, might fool even hardcore devotees of early electronic music into thinking these songs were recorded in West Germany during the '70s. From the propulsive analog flutter layered in the opening “Quick Stab of White” to the Tangerine Dream–inspired closer “Private Life of a Diamond,” it’s evident that painstaking attention to period-correct detail was lovingly paid here, with nary a hint of irony. It should also be noted that Mask of the Maker is peerless in that it extends beyond the synth-patching fetishism of the band’s contemporaries. Take, for example, the handsomely funky “Elimination Street,” which studiously recalls Italian disco producer Giorgio Moroder’s early-'70s relocation to Munich, where he formed Oasis Records. The kinetic “Jungle Jah” cleverly avoids nerdy re-creationism with hints of techno, as does “Semazen Salem” with innovative looping of tribal rhythms.