Galán / Spieth / Guentner: Obreel
Affin

The powerful artistic sensibilities of Markus Guentner, Joachim Spieth, and Pepo Galán converge on Obreel, all three bringing long and adventurous histories as producers of ambient and experimental electronic music to the collaboration. The nine productions they've collectively sculpted are texturally rich soundscapes crafted with care and fastidious attention to detail and shape. With three producers contributing, the results could have become an exercise in overkill; on the contrary, the material reflects their decision to embrace reduction as a guiding principle and maximize musical impact using minimal means.

For listeners conversant with the ambient-soundscaping genre, introductions aren't necessary. Hailing from Germany, Guentner and Spieth are well-established and admired figures, Guentner known for the music he's released since the ‘90s and Spieth, Affin's founder, also someone who's shared material with the world for decades. Galán, who calls Málaga, Spain home, has also been creating music extending from ambient soundscapes to gritty electronic music for over two decades. The three prove themselves to be natural collaborators on this joint project.

In its physical presentation, the release comes in a handsome, six-panel case whose colour scheme and imagery suggests a dark ambient connection. No instrumentation details are provided, though it's safe to say the material was created using the standard arsenal of sound production equipment. The album emerges like some planetary colossus gradually coming into view, “Velthra” the first of nine sweeping epics teeming in timbral details and densely layered. Fragments of melody glimmer and echo within a thrumming, multi-tiered mass. Symphonic streams of silken washes stretch across the upper part of the sound field while cavernous rumblings convulse below. After “Velthra” exits as slowly as it entered, “Orrison” takes its place, the material in this case seeming to awaken from slumber to gradually gather form. Particles of piano sparkle amidst surging waves, the whole a becalmed behemoth that one's pulled into like a black hole. Scattered across a crackle-drenched foundation, piano flickerings brightly accent the barren surfaces of “Noin,” the tone brooding and portentous and the feel desolate.

Perhaps the greatest slow-burn arrives with the thunderous “En El Aqui Y Ahora,” which, speaking of black holes, could pass for an approximation of such in sonic terms. “Phantom Bloom,” on the other hand, is its diametric opposite in its focus on quietude and fragility. Obreel is at its most elegiac during “Erdenkind,” an exercise in symphonic ambient whose entrancing character recalls Guentner productions from the past, and—speaking of slow-burn—the soothing, set-ending “Tremude.”

May 2026