Umnachter – Gedankensplitter.

• Label: Self-Released.
• Year: 2008.
• Style: Classical Acoustic Folk.
• Format: CD.
• Note:
• Score: 86%

When I listen to this album, I hear a lot of things, but there are four main elements if you ask me. The first one is the calm, flowing acoustic folk music bordering to classical. Then we have the more rough, rocky and riff-based acoustics. We also get a great share of throat singing, a technique often occurred in Asian world music, here I would like to refer to the Tuvan cult band HUUN-HUUR-TU. Pretty hard to imagine those sounds to come from a human throat actually.
The fourth “main element” is the Nordic clinging yoik-like chants. These parts together create this, UMNACHTER’s first solo album called “Gedankensplitter”. And yes, the voice has a big part on this album, even though it contains almost no lyrics (some whispered singing in the some tracks), and except the guitar, we don’t get many other instruments (the mouth harp has a great role though!). So one might imagine that this is a very minimal album, but on the contrary, the sound is very rich and full. Robert Polsterer, the guy behind this project, is very used to play advanced and complex music already; this is UMNACHTER’s debut, but he’s been involved in the metal scenes for many years and the skills it takes to play melodic death metal comes in handy here as well. He also seems to be some kind of musical perfectionist, in all-positive means of course, since the music here is, according to my ears, free from flaws.

The CD contains 11 tracks. The first one is pretty much a demonstration of to expect of the album in general. It starts with a beautiful melody, not very far away from the sound of OCTOBER FALLS, MUSK OX and old ULVER. After a while, we get the first throat singing and the track moves over to the more rocky sound, and the acoustic guitar gets a back up by the mouth harp. Near the end of it, there are also some of that yoik I mentioned. A very good way to start this album, and a great track indeed!
The second one is a pretty short progressive folk melody strictly instrumental and another very good one, actually, it’s one of my favourites from “Gedankensplitter”.
Next in line is “Dudelsack für Arme” – a yoik and throat singing track free from any instruments what so ever. A clash of two worlds, really, and, you’ve guessed it, once again a splendid track.
And this is the way it goes, alternating between those styles through out the 11 tracks. Some moments are of course more interesting than the other, but overall, it’s simply very good.
The sixth track, “Schindluder” is a very trollish folk song, a strong card indeed, where we also get some percussion for the first time, something that returns in the ninth one. In between there hides the very calm and gentle “Alpenland”, another favourite. The same can be said about “Letztes Aufbegehren”, splendid.
“Gedankensplitter”’s goodbye consists of a lonely throat singing show of.

Is it clear that I really, really fancy this album? I do. I love to listen to Robert’s gentle acoustic arrangements, and I love how he pushed the boarders of who separated cultures close together.
What I don’t love is the cover art, but this is certainly a case of “do not judge the book by its cover”. Another let down is the length of the CD, I’d like to see it twice as long!

Before I end this, I would also like to mention, on Robert’s request, that he do not wish to have anything to do with the controversial neofolk movement even though this is a site with it’s focus on that particular scene. UMNACHTER is light years away from fooling around in suspicious uniforms and his chock value is none. Of course, I would never support an extreme political band (more about this in the “About” section), but I’m aware of that the industrial neofolk scene may seem harsh at a first glance.
I do of course respect (and share) Robert’s opinions so I never doubted to write this statement.

With that said, the only thing that remains is to give you all my greatest recommendations if you are looking for a very interesting and unique acoustic folk album.