Tracklist
- Canto One: Chorale 02:53
- Canto Two: The Waiting Room 06:30
- Canto Three: Celestial Hymns 10:13
- Canto Four: Eternal Bliss 10:28
- Canto Five: Downward 08:06
Free download: phaneronaut.bandcamp.com/album/anabasis
Listen here:
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About
This album has changed course since work on it began. Originally, it was supposed to become “Uyt den gheest”, the planned sister album to “Naer het leven“. The idea for “Uyt den gheest” was to have two parts, a “Metal” side and a “Wood” side.
But soon while working on the first tracks, a new story/concept for the album presented itself: a journey to heaven. But it’s not completely clear if that journey is permanent or just a visit – or if it even actually is heaven where the visitor ends up. That’s for you to decide.
What stayed from the original idea is the “Metal” part: All sounds on the album are either, in contrast to other Phaneronaut releases, from digital synthesizers or from sampled “real” instruments that have different kinds of metal as their primary source of sound production (with some exceptions for drums/percussion and voices).
Released June 29, 2022
Credits
Written, performed and produced by Udo Gerhards (October 2021 – June 2022)
Reviews
This latest release from Phaneronaut is difficult to classify. It draws from their past in electronica, as well as zeuhl, avant-prog, film scores, and music from around the world. But this seeming hodgepodge gels marvelously and makes for a fantastic record.
Every so often a new album just hits you the right way and you are not sure why. Enter Phaneronaut, a one-man band from Germany. Anabasis is not his first recording but from sampling his previous works – which are mainly weird electronica – it is his most diverse. Split into five cantos, each with a signature sound, Phaneronaut covers a lot of ground.
Babyblaue Prog-Review (german)
Anabasis is another impressive work from Phaneronaut, and of the ones I know, it is clearly the most successful. Anyone who likes electronic music of the edgier kind (which admittedly doesn’t sound all that electronic at times) should get to know this album.
Liner Notes
The album is again quite different then the ones before. Of course there’s lots of electronics on there, but this time it’s exclusively digitally produced sounds: lots of Wavetables, Granular Synths and even some Physical Modeling. In addition, there’s a lot of sample libraries used, for percussion, brass and some possibly surprising other bits and pieces.
Musically, it’s also something different. There is a full blown Zeuhl piece in there (my hommage to a genre I love), there’s a bit of warped Bossa Nova, some Post-Rock (maybe? I don’t know), some film music influences and much more.
Also, a note about the title of the album: For several years now, I’ve been following the work of an american Bible scholar named Bart Ehrman. In 2019 or so, Ehrman started to write on his blog about some new book projects of his, dealing with accounts of visits to the afterlife. There I learned that in scholarly circles these accounts are called “Katabasis” for a visit to hell, and “Anabasis” for visits to heaven. This gave me the idea for the title and concept.
Phaneronaut 