Inselwinter

Right on time for winter solstice on Dec. 21, Anna releases THE SILICON SCIENTIST’s very first six track album recorded back in 2002/03 and given the title “Inselwinter” (“Island’s winter”). “Inselwinter” is a 60 mins fully electronic instrumental concept album, a rather quiet and non-pompous album, inviting you to journey with your friend Old Man Winter. It’s combining analog and digital synths and rhythm machine sounds (Korg Minipops, Roland TR-808 toms, etc), lots of strings (Solina String-Ensemble and others) and hauntingly beautiful lead synth melodies. Two tracks, namely “Inselwinter I” and “Inselwinter II”, had already made it to the “Bookmarks II” bonus CDr which was accompanying the “Poly” album in 2009. And so the story goes as far as this release is concerned: on November 9, Stefan approached Anna by kindly offering to make the complete album exclusively available as a ‘winter special’ in the period of Dec. 21 to March 21. Said and done, of course! But after a hard day’s (and night’s) work, Anna had a glass of red wine (or maybe one too much…) and “Inselwinter” playing again, when she, on Nov 23 at 3 a.m., approached Stefan in return asking to please release the album at least also in a rather minimalistic CD version. Well, who would not succumb to the ma’moiselle’s charms, hehe?! So Stefan checked his archive and found additional demo recordings for each of the album tracks no. #1-#5 and a similar recording from around that time, “Elektrum”, thus making the CD version a 78,5 mins journey, while the digital bandcamp version features the original six track album plus an exclusive bonus track entitled “Voices On The Wind”, another instrumental track featuring field recordings, synthesised wind noises and a Mellotron 400 choir that’s sounding like coming right off Popul Vuh’s ‘Nosferatu’ soundtrack or Lucio Fulci’s ‘The Beyond’. The track was unearthed and added in like last minute and can be downloaded as an individual track on bandcamp. It so happened that the CD was actually said to be delivered exactly on Dec. 21, oh well, the signs are there, the signs! So here we go and here we are now, on Dec. 21, but as the world is probably not about to end, please accompany good Old Man Winter and play “Inselwinter” while you can. -Anna