3 out of 5

Label: WéMè Records

Produced by: ?

A very intriguing set of textures from Dopplereffekt, but walking a somewhat distracting line between experimentation and melody. While this is probably fitting for the album title – I can barely make sense of the wikipedia article on Calabi-Yau Space without clicking in to a million other articles – the music crisscrosses between some of Doppler’s most fascinating, ear-grabbing tunes, and effects that seem like mathematical representations turned to sound, or unfinished theorems – sticking with that framework – that build up the problem with no solution. The tunes wind around through absolutely groundbreaking stuff, given its original release window (2007), with opener Calabi Yau Manifold and Hypersurface effecting a very controlled vesion of glitchy IDM that I feel like we wouldn’t hear emerge for another decade or so, and some synthwave elements on Hyperelliptic Surfaces and C-side single track Non Vanishing Harmonic Spinor that, again, predate that movement by quite a bit. However, the way this stuff is stitched together, while making good use of a 2xLP setup, is very uneven: songs end without much fanfare – especially closer Dimension 11, seeming like a prologue for a followup that’s not present – and the entire B-side feels like sketches. Incredibly cool sketches, but still, moreso concepts than full tracks, bumping into each other. For every moment that I felt like I finally “got” Dopplereffekt – a project which often leaves me a little cold – I’d get dropped out of the immersiveness of a moment due to one of the above mentioned effects.

Still, the album is undeniably unique: mindblowing for its time, and a decade+ on, its attention-grabbing, in part for its unevenness being disruptive, but also because those moments where it hits are mesmeriizing, and the moments where it doesn’t are, at worst, unnervingly odd.

I don’t own the original Rephlex version, but the WéMè rerelease sounds phenomenal, looking like it fully replicates the previous artwork and labels exactly.