A drastic record for drastic times: “Vision” shows SOMAN impressively upping the ante, following the path worthy of an equally technical and artistic mastermind like Kolja Trelle. He leaves generic club hits to the others, music for the masses is not what he’s after. For years he has been on his way to stimulate both head and stomach with his relentlessly storming manifestos. In the past 20 years he has been tinkering with his very own footprint in the world of electronic darkness and yet always finds new ways and means to disturb, shake up or hammer his audience into a trance-like stupor.
“Vision” is already his third album since his comeback smasher “Nox” barely two years ago – a feverish conclusion of this first triptych of this new era impressive even for a veteran producer like Trelle. Anybody familiar with his shimmering, electrifying, wildly strobing, chimerically shape-shifting trademark sound knows what that entails: A pendulum swinging constantly and inex-orably between the poles of nocturnal club culture. Euphoric and intoxicating, threatening and hammering. And yet never interchangeable or arbitrary.
Born in a worldwide pandemic and fueled by everything that is going on in the world right now, “Vision” does one thing fundamentally different than its predecessors “Global” and “Nox”: Abeit being instrumental, it has an even stronger narrative telling of the great events and emotions around the globe. Words are very unnecessary. “Vision” is an album forged in the limitless power of the machine and yet inherently human. SOMAN masterfully and solitarily bring techno/electro over the threshold of singularity and lead it into a new era. Into a future of heartbeat and circuits, if you will, into an era where man and machine finally merge.