The 73-year-old Hans-Joachim Roedelius, member of the seminal experimental krautrockers, Cluster, and Ohio-based, Grammy award nominated composer, Tim Story (53 years old) are back with the follow-up to their elegiac album Lunz (named for the pristine lake in Austria). The fact that they’ve subtitled this new piece Inlandish suits how the two performers divvy out their tasks. Roedelius returns to his classical training days by only supplying icy piano motifs. Melancholy piano and trudging cello are the driving forces behind “As It Were”’s nostalgic ebb and flow (water metaphors abound for this type of music).After 10 days of recording Roedelius handed his part of the album to Story who did what Roedelius became famous for ”“ churning electronic music that people call ambient or new age, for lack of a better term. Basically look somewhere else if you are looking for an album to lull you to sleep; you do these skilled artists a huge disservice.It took Story a total of five months to fit everything together and it shows. His electronic elements are warm (like on the first track) but also foreign and downright foreboding on the title track. Some of the small flashes of terror evoked on the latter half of Brian Eno’s The Plateaux of Mirror pop up in the droning synthesizers puffing up steam over that steady stream of stately piano. “Trouve” is a clockwork piece with orbiting beeps.Atonal feedback flaps in from the left creating something akin to objects flying past your car or more appropriately your space cruiser. “Donwnrivers” encases a lone opera singer under an ocean of static, electronic beeps and gurgling whirs. “Ripple and Fade” and “House of Glances” incorporate detuned toy pianos and analogue synthesizers resulting in a ghostly-yet-beautiful sound akin to that of Boards of Canada. During a second listen I heard what seems like children’s voices when the electronic wind chimes kick in.The standout track is the busy chimes heard on “Serpentining.” The tonal shifts spray out bright swathes of reverb and static showering Roedelius’ sauntering piano melody line. Just when the song seems to sputter into the sunset it lumbers onward ”“ strangely graceful. “The Orchardist” is a strange love song wrapped in lazy summer day electronic work. A cello serves as a frame of reference for the languid trolling. Like many songs on the album the non-electronic instruments serve as anchors to the oil-slick electronics. Only with the bounding strings and piano on “Riddled” does the pace pick up considerably from the languid air encasing most of the tracks on Inlandish.Just like its namesake, this album is another halcyon collection of fluid chamber music. Today you can see Roedelius’ minimalist stamp on ranging from Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin but Tim Story is his most contiguous disciple. Both men are completely self-taught and their music is extremely hypnotic ”“ picture that shimmering mountain lake and you get somewhat close to an exact approximation of this music’s elegant fragility. 89%Links Hans-Joachim Roedelius [official site] Tim Story [official site]