A Series of Shocks is the title of the forthcoming album from Berlin-based producer Tobias Freund (a.k.a. Tobias.), but its opening track, “Entire,” is anything but jarring. The cycling arpeggios and shifting timbres are weightless in the best way, suggesting classical minimalism’s contrapuntal pulse studies run through cosmic music’s psychedelic filter. It’s a deceptively dulcet introduction: From there, Freund plunges headlong into the head-spinning techno you’d expect from the label arm of Berlin’s Berghain.
The history of the video that accompanies the track is as tangled as Freund’s own modular patch cables: He shot the footage on Hi8 video back in 1992, when he was still engineering Milli Vanilli records with Frank Farian. (No, really.) This year, his wife, the video artist Valentina Berthelon, re-edited the material into the pixelated astral travelogue you see here. “Entire” is intended as the first in a series of videos the pair will create to accompany A Series of Shocks. That’s not the only aspect of the project that suggest it’s a family affair — Freund’s longtime collaborator Max Loderbauer also pitched in on “Entire.”
A Series of Shocks is out March 31 from Ostgut Ton; check out the far tougher “Ya Po” below.
