Leermond's music is defined by the composer himself (one half of the German duo Die Schatten) as "wandering through time and the senses" - and Castanea is an album that illustrates this description in the most representative manner. Deeply introspective and thought-provoking, the sound flirts with an assortment of styles and genres, claiming its own particular "signature" through the creative assimilation of its references.
13 moments of death by The Gloomster (yet another project by the poet Arne Pahlke) is described by the author himself as the "soundtrack" to a "film" depicting the many different ways to die. Death by accident, recklessness or illness, by law (execution), by the hand of a murderer or by one's own hand. Being killed in a war is a serious possibility as well, but that would be an entirely different story and what mostly interests Arne here is, I believe, the view of death as a private, individual experience - a more or less unpredicted occurrence in the routine of an otherwise peaceful, or at least ordinary life (with the obvious exception of Long way to the electric chair) - though "ordinary" is actually a term too generalised to apply to the vicissitudes of each particular person's way of living.
An interesting, "exorcising" journey into strange echoing dreamscapes and the subconscious, with sounds and voices that seem like coming from inside the listener's own head.
