Astrale Presenta: Steve Hauschildt + Niklas Paschburg

Steve Hauschildt  is an American electronic musician based in Chicago. He is a member of the band Emeralds and has been releasing solo material since the mid-2000s. While performing and recording as a trio, all members of Emeralds released solo material. Hauschildt released two albums under his own name in this period, The Summit and Critique of the Beautiful.After the folding of Emeralds in 2013, Hauschildt's first widely distributed release arrived in 2011, when Kranky released his full-length Tragedy & Geometry. The album features heavy use of the Prophet '08 synthesizer,and is influenced by 1970s-era Kosmische musik.Its title is taken from the subjects governed by two of the Greek muses, Melpomene and Polyhymnia.IIn 2012 a second album Sequitur was released, followed by the collection of outtakes and demos S/H on Editions Mego a year later.In the latter part of 2014, Hauschildt contributed the collection Air Texture IV together with BNJMN .In September 2015, he released the album Where All Is Fled, which marked a return with new material after a three-year absence. In October 2016, Hauschildt released the album Strands. The album Dissolvi was released August 3, 2018 on the Ghostly International label, and includes collaborations with GABI and Julianna Barwick.

Niklas Paschburg is a German pianist and composer. Paschburg's music is in the area of neoclassics. His classical piano figures are supplemented by electronic instruments used mostly on a flat and the piano playing is often simple, also because Paschburg, according to his own statement, attaches great importance to keeping the songs pop. Despite similarities to musicians such as Nils Frahm, Hauschka, Olafur Arnalds and Max Richter, he is ascribed to uniqueness. In 2016, Paschburg became publicly appearing for the first time in 2016 with the EP Tuur Mang Welten ("Travel Between Worlds"). The EP was released over 7K!, the K7 sublabel for neoclassical. This makes him one of the few German classic professional pianists outside the Deutsche Grammophon or major sub-labels. On this first release, the electronic component of his music is still in the background, which prevails over the avant-garde piano playing. The worlds to which the title refers are the sea near his birthplace and the forest of his hometown of Franconia at that time. Later works are also concerned with the representation of a scenic nature. On the debut album Oceanic released in 2018, the electronics portions will become significantly more dominant. In addition, there are alienated sound shots of the coast, “without degenerating in sailor skicharged”. The album was mostly made in the Baltic Sea resort of Grömitz. In reviews, including NPR and The Guardian, the album was rated very positively. For example, Paschburg was paved the way to attract attention outside the classical world, for example with guest appearances at radioeins, FluxFM and Cosmo Radio. In 2020, the second studio album Svalbard was released, most of which was made on the Norwegian island of the same name in winter and was later recorded in Brighton. The album was dedicated to the theme of ice. Drone sounds represent “constant cold and monumental glaciers” and acoustic and electronic elements are unusually strongly related, instead of coexistence. Even if the debate with the topics of loneliness, nature and cold for Laut.de is not enough in parts, the magazine sees a special merit in this regard by Paschburg. A year later he released the album Post-Svalbard. Paschburg composed the film music for the French film Glück, which was released 2021. The film score for the road movie Ernesto's Island followed in 2022.