New Routes Out of Innerland

Innerland, the debut solo album from Engineers founder and Ulrich Schnauss collaborator Mark Peters, was a pleasant, relaxing set of windswept guitar-based instrumentals that evoked various locations throughout Northwest England. First issued as a limited cassette in 2017, it was given a proper release in 2018, along with a beatless variation titled Ambient Innerland, and slowly began to accumulate an appreciative audience. New Routes Out of Innerland is a track-by-track reconstruction, with producers ranging from Schnauss to Jefre Cantu-Ledesma providing new contexts for Peters' melodies and textures. The results are often a bit darker than the originals, adding clouds to the landscape. This is most evident on Brian Case's mix of "Windy Arbour," which reduces the sunny original to a plodding, distorted off-time loop and gradually applies layers of wind-tunnel echo. Odd Nosdam surrounds the solemn pianos of "Shaley Brow" in thick, rainfall-like tape hiss and adds a mysterious voice which flits between laughter and nostalgic singing. The droning, distorted music probably makes the sample sound more sinister than it does on its own. Elsewhere, Schnauss smooths out "May Mill" (one of the album's more beefed-up tracks) with vocoders and a trippier beat sequence, and E Ruscha V transforms "Cabin Hill" into a piece of funky Fourth World Balearica, with a sneaky bass guitar bump, scattered electro beats, and a wavering, Hassell-like mutant horn tone. Best of all is Cantu-Ledesma's astonishing mix of "Ashurst's Beacon," a typically magical combination of crushed, trudging drums and gloriously hazy guitars. ~ Paul Simpson