Rheintraum open “Radiophysik” like they’re tuning a shortwave at dusk, catching wayward stations of memory and possibility. The Dutch duo’s second album imagines a parallel broadcast history—dusty towers, flickering dials, analog ghosts—then inhabits it with uncommon confidence. Their core tension is immediately legible: the precision of seasoned funk players pushing against the loose, horizon-seeking logic of kosmische music. That friction becomes the engine of the record’s momentum, a motor hum that never lapses into museum-grade pastiche.
Recorded live with overdubs, the performances have air around them; you hear the room in the drum transients and the slight grit of keys riding the noise floor. Phil Martin’s motorik kit is disciplined but never stiff, nudging the grid rather than obeying it, while Tim den Heijer’s guitars sketch neon parabolas—delay-smudged arpeggios, glassy harmonics, the occasional serrated scrape to keep the dream from getting too comfortable. The editing is meticulous yet invisible, shaping long arcs without sanding off the spontaneity that gives these pieces breath.
“Lichtjahre” is the album’s most elegant drift: a held-note synth beacon and soft-tread drums that open like a night road, with guitar filigree tracing constellations at the margins. “Grunpunkt” tilts toward psychedelia, bass and toms advancing in a steady piston as sheets of guitar feedback are feathered into the stereo field rather than hurled at it; it’s intoxicating precisely because it refuses the obvious blowout. “Raumpatrouille” steals a march, its bassline (one of several weight-bearing guest turns) welding the rhythm section to the floor while filtered pulses chatter like a control room panel—small, tactile details that make the piece feel engineered as much as performed. Even the shorter cues—“Interkosmos,” “Luftschloss”—function as apertures, letting the album breathe without conceding the spell.
What keeps “Radiophysik” from collapsing into retro cosplay is its melodic sensibility. Rheintraum foreground hooks the old guard often treated as incidental: singable motifs that surface, recede, and return with altered harmonics, as if the dial has drifted then clicked back into focus. The duo’s funk pedigree matters here. Their grooves don’t announce themselves with volume; they insinuate, prioritizing pocket and micro-dynamics over brute insistence. You can trace lines to Cluster’s austere lyricism or NEU!’s perpetual forward-lean, but the real kinship is with musicians who understood the studio as an improvising partner—where saturation, panning, and reverb tails are compositional choices, not afterthoughts.
The mix privileges midrange warmth and low-end patience, a choice that flatters headphones and big speakers alike. Synths bloom rather than stab; guitars are more prism than knife. When the record flirts with industrial texture—ventilator drones, metallic thrum—it does so as atmosphere, not posture. The result is music that invites deep listening without demanding it; you can follow the circuitry or let the signal wash over you. Either way, Rheintraum make the forgotten frequency feel current, an act of present-tense imagination rather than nostalgia.
As a statement, “Radiophysik” is both self-contained and suggestive. It refines the duo’s debut language into something sleeker and more emotive, a map of corridors they can now sprint through or abandon at will. If there’s a complaint, it’s that the record is almost too polite about its own power; you sense they could push the faders into the red and still land the plane. But restraint is also the point: the thrill of a broadcast you caught by chance and can’t quite place, alluring precisely because it doesn’t shout its origin. Rheintraum tune the modern band to an older bandwidth and, in doing so, find a signal that feels unmistakably their own.
