Zeugwart Hallbauer like to use spaces. Many sounds seem to circulate in a far distance, diving in and out of the listener’s ear. And they create a lot of room for these sounds, still there are always walls somewhere to stop the sounds from floating into total oblivion. Did somebody say these guys were playing electronica?
Zeugwart Hallbauer’s music is sort of loop based, two or three main rhythmic motives and a line to carry the melody. Don’t get me wrong: the “Kölner Sommer” EP isn’t really minimal. Zeugwart Hallbauer superimpose many loops on top of each other, create swinging, even polyrhytmic patterns of synthetic melodies and grooves. You can dance to it, but you don’t have to. You can also chill and nod your head while trying to figure out the many influences sven and alexander melt together: house and techno-music (obvious), pop and jazz, hip hop, maybe 70’s electronic music (sometimes klaus schulze comes to my mind).
A mindful listener annotated: this music sounds like the soundtrack of a David Lynch movie for children. Lynch too: a figure between the games. His films permanently question the thresholds of the familiar, the homey. There where the uncanny sticks its tongue through the chinks in the partition between day and dream, and it’s exactly there where Zeugwart Hallbauer - musically - investigates too.