The Berlin-based electronic musician Sascha Ring is better known as Apparat. Emerging as a recording artist around the turn of the century, he’s been responsible for scads of releases of varying formats and durations on a variety of labels since, including Mute, which is issuing his sixth full-length A Hum of Maybe, on vinyl (turquoise or black), compact disc, and digital February 20. Starting out as a dance floor techno specialist, Ring’s been branching out stylistically for a long while. His latest is a fruitful extension of those progressions.
Before he broke out as a musician, Sascha Ring co-founded the record label Shitkatapult. His earliest full-lengths came out on this imprint, a run culminating with the acclaimed 2007 set Walls. His next LP, The Devil’s Walk, was released in 2011 by Mute, which has been his primary label since.
Ring’s move away from beat-centric techno stuff wasn’t a deliberate, calculated swing toward abstract soundscapes. Some of his material was downright songlike and even featured vocals, often his own. Beats were, in fact, still part of the scheme. And while many musicians in the electronic field struggle with longevity, the 2019 Apparat set LP5 garnered a solid reception; it even received a Grammy nomination for Best Dance/Electronic Album.
A Hum of Maybe is the first new Apparat music since the release of LP5, having taken shape only after Ring overcame a sustained period of writer’s block. Breaking through in earnest last year, he teamed up again with Philipp Johann Thimm, who co-wrote and co-produced the record, along with contributing cello, guitar, and piano.
If those instruments seem unusual for an album and musician categorized as electronic, please understand that Ring has been integrating acoustic instrumentation into his music since the early 2000s. Along with Thimm’s input, A Hum of Maybe also features Christoph “Mäckie” Hamann on violin, keyboard, and bass, Jörg Wähner on drums, and Christian Kohlhaas on trombone.
Although the history of electro-acoustics is long, the combination of tech and trad instrumentation can still be a tricky maneuver to pull off. Happily, Ring has not lost his knack with A Hum of Maybe. The opener “Glimmerine” is among the album’s best cuts, starting as a mood piece with a piano-vocal foundation only to ramp up the tempo and the electro reverberations, complete with ragged trombones, freakout passages, and ambient stretches.
There are tracks with a decidedly more electronic thrust, such as the next two in the sequence: “A Slow Collision,” with its woozy, almost retrofuturistic surges, and the more textured drift of “Gravity Test.” Next is “Tilth,” which features a vocal duet with Ring’s labelmate KÁRYYN and is the first of consecutive album highlights with the grand flow of the title track to follow.
If the rest of the album doesn’t sustain this mid-way point peak, there are no letdowns or misfires. Most importantly, with A Hum of Maybe, Sascha Ring has managed to cultivate an organic warmth without sacrificing the electronic distinctiveness that has long defined Apparat.
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