Markus Reuter and Stefano Castagna - 2025 - Sky on the Ground

(40:45; Iapetus)






















I really enjoyed the 2023 debut from these guys, ‘Sea of Hopeless Angels’, so I am pleased to see they are back with another. As with the debut, Stefano was given access to recordings by Markus (although this time there was more time, and he was given access to far more material). The concept was similar to that often used by Robin Taylor in that these recordings were then used as a palette from which Stefano created new art. The guiding idea for this release was to create concise pieces which could follow one direction before switching to another, and that combined with the use of their voices makes for a release which is very different indeed to what I have come to expect from Markus, yet somehow familiar at the same time. 

Once Stefano got the album to a certain point, he and Markus sat down to review, which in turn led to additional recording as they brought in more layers to create a more complete work. There are more commercial elements here than one normally expects, but they have been drawn from an avant garde perspective which makes them seem almost other worldly, yet the shortness of each piece (only two break five minutes) is also in contrast to the normal extended songs one expects. There is not enough time to really get inside the thought processes before it is onto the next one, which is somehow unsettling and interesting at the same moment. There is a lightness and deftness of touch which makes this a fascinating experiment and is far more holistic than one might expect given the way it was brought together. It is very much the coming together of two minds, one the original creator and then the other moving and blending those sounds in a different way before they both came together at the end to recognise what was needed to bring it to a climax. Even the album cover is a combination of two different approaches as each chose a very different image, and these were superimposed to create something new and different from the originals. This is not nearly as difficult to comprehend as some of Markus’s other works so should be of interest to a wider audience, and rightly so.  

Kev Rowland, October 2025

Links:
https://www.markusreuter.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stecastagna/
https://www.facebook.com/iapetusstore

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