Lost In Rooms: A Virtualectric Story

Lost in Rooms is an unusual work for Lutz Glandien, but then again the composer tends to reinvent himself with every album. This one blends storytelling, sampling, mainstream electronica, and experimental collage into a captivating hörspiel. The work evolved from music written for a dance project. Glandien started by asking the dancers to record texts of their choice in English, French, Chinese, and Estonian. Daelik's story, a string of childhood memories, became the main narrative and provided the title of the work (he often comes back to his siblings' bedrooms and how he would upgrade from one bedroom to another as his older siblings left the family house). In the narrative sections, his voice is heard untreated, lying on top of heavily processed textures mostly derived from vocal sounds. In the other tracks (half of them), you hear the other voices sampled and processed, often brought back to their animal content: breaths, gasps, unintelligible syllables. They become beats, melodies, or background textures for thumping electronica tunes sounding true enough to the ear not to sound forced or like academic exercises in popular dance music. The whole piece flows seamlessly and elegantly, helping the listener negotiate the shifts between narration and music, between beat-driven electronica and very delicate sections (a Chinese voice and accordion in "Like This"), always careful not to burst the bubble. Lost in Rooms moves further into electronic territory than The 5th Elephant, but its "radio play" form makes it paradoxically a more demanding listen. ~ François Couture, Rovi