Autumna - The Stasi Café

 

Released: March 19

The Stasi Cafe is a bit of a confusing album for me. Sonically, it is quite beautiful with its lush and airy textures and stunning use of vocal samples and field recordings. Thematically, I can’t quite figure out what is going on here, especially considering the name of the album. Regardless, the vignette-like quality of each track pulled me in rather unexpectedly as the large and echo-y spaces present left me wondering. It really feels like the whole album takes place within a very think mist - one that can barely be seen through except to see only the roughest of outlines, some of which induce feelings of dread while others bring about a sense of anemoia or a vague memory of something you think you experienced but can’t be sure. 

The first track is oddly and nefariously named “Space heaters Bathing With Bastards,” but despite the name, it feels oddly uneventful. Rather it feels simply idk the introduction to the metaphorical mist that the rest of the Album has lingering over it. This continues as we move into the second and third tracks, the first two that continue those faint and indiscernible vocal field recordings that put us in the scene of markets, shop, restaurants, and other places that seem to be full of life and activity. Though, as I listen, I notice that these active scenes have some kind of strange gloom about them. These don’t feel like scenes of happiness. As I listened, I found myself wondering “what kind of place is this? where has this taken me?”

It is overall a rather opaque journey. The scene are foggy and unclear but with conflicting undertones. Are these hopeful places or are they overcast with some kind of undefined saturnine aura that can’t be expressly named? Regardless of the answer to any of this, it remains a rather evocative album that skillfully incorporates ambiguity into often glum soundscapes that make the listener question what the are supposed to feel. A well-maintained balance that leaves the listener in a state of comfortable uncertainty as the fuzzy scenes unfold around them.