Enticing us with a vinyl-esque textures, percussion and cosmic details, we are already immersed in the first track from muddasheep‘s album Still Leben. As Mind Palace Elevator expands, we experience transcendental synths and fused keys and guitars lending themselves to an enigmatic sonic journey.
Textures are refined and poetic, with immersive soundscaping that really hypnotize us before we are drawn back in by the piercing synth-work.
Still Leben is a collaboration with both new and experienced musicians. Most tracks were created live with the help of an audience, using samples submitted by the contributing musicians. Still Leben is also an interactive album, which lets us enable and disable individual instruments; that version is available on itch.io.
The second track from the record is called Eternal Sun, which comes through with an optimistic and ancient energy. We are mesmerized by the detail in each track and love the natural sound design that lends each track to more multi-dimensionality.
Philipp Lehner from Vienna, Austria has been using the alias muddasheep and creating music for the past 20 years, including soundtracks for popular games like Cry of Fear and Halfquake Trilogy. Speaking on his style, muddasheep self-describes as “downtempo, chill, future garage, and ambient, my melodies have been described as haunting, melancholic, yet hopeful.”
Some of his influences include Beck, Nine Inch Nails, Björk, Madonna, Alanis Morissette, Aphex Twin and Fever Ray.
The third track on the album is Ticket To Paradise and holds an enigmatic and cinematic vibe. The outro is almost meditative and transcendental, we feel transported.
Ascender has a more industrial and bouncy fusion intro which is immediately unique, yet familiar considering the journey that we have been on. Nothing sounds alike, yet everything is cohesive. The playful and cerebral elements come into play in Ascender, before we experience a more transcendental segment of the song with enigmatic keys. The drum riffs are moving and the entire soundscape is technologically futuristic.
The fifth track is Placebo Flower, which feels almost like a DMT trip at first. We feel immersed and enlightened by the playful nature of the track and understand its connection with nature and technology. The Prophet’s Delight takes us on a more subversive journey with a purring synth juxtaposed with glistening instrumentation and a music box. Premonition opens with charming guitar layers and we feel a sense of warm familiarity. We love being able to hear fingers on strings in this fusion of electronica and live instrumentation. Time of Death is the first song that we experience a more vocal presence, although there are no lyrics.
All of the tracks were created in muddasheep‘s home studio, most of them while streaming live on Twitch. Elaborating, muddasheep says, “I asked a dozen musicians to provide sounds and samples, so each song is a collaboration with a different artist.”
The credited and featured musicians are: H4ndy, Oleg, tipsheda, Ivoryocean, Pao, TaskBeenden, Maximiliano Galán Cid, LupusRex, Moonlyer, Mariya Nesmeyanova, Akim Boyko, Saimizz, Funnycreature and Scruffy.
Utima Forsan features exquisite keys, guitar and synth-strings that truly envelope us. We then experience Skeleton Parade which opens with strings and an almost soft-ska beat which is a momentum changer in the record, lending itself to a more playful nature which is reminiscent of a hot European summer. The song also features some Spanish guitar which is evocative and sensual.
Skull Behind the Mask reminds us of the artwork and feels more renaissance inspired with folk elements, before taking a more haunting direction with a sparse astral segment that has us intrigued. We love the moodier and gothic elements that come through here.
muddasheep was also featured on the soundtrack for Cry of Fear, which got played by popular streamers to millions of people.
Speaking on his collaborative intentions with the project, muddasheep says, “I wanted to create music with musicians who had never been on an album before. By adding experienced musicians into the mix (including myself), I wanted to inspire the new musicians to keep working on their own music more actively and show them what’s possible if you just keep on going. It makes for a fascinating fresh sound on the album.”
Next up we have Soul Crier, which takes us to a more futuristic dimension on this astral journey, followed by In a Haze which is enigmatic at first and fused with intricate and cerebral textures.
The only two tracks that muddasheep is featured as a solo artist are Ascender and the final track, Take It To The Grave. The final track fuses genres with emotive strings that lend themselves to moments of euphoria and ongoing contemplation.
Speaking on the uniqueness of the project and his collaborations, muddasheep says, “All songs have their own stories, because each was created by different samples and sounds from different people. Scruffy (“In a Haze”) sent in a recording of frogs croaking in the rain from his old house. H4ndy (“Mind Palace Elevator”) sent in samples of his ebass, and recordings of a stone saw noise from a construction site that woke him up at 6:30 in the morning. Tipsheda sent me stems from a song he wasn’t able to finish.”
“However, the story of “The Prophet’s Delight” is especially noteworthy: Pao sent me several foliage sounds, and recordings of a music box. That music box was handed down from her grandmother to her mother, and from her mother to her.”
“By using the sounds of it, the song is paying tribute to their lineage. She and her mother were present during the livestream while the song was created, and they both were very happy that the music box is now in the ears of so many more listeners. Fun fact: “The Prophet” is the name of the aggressive synth preset that Pao wanted me to use.”
We are obsessed, as you can tell, and have added Placebo Flower to our New Music Spotlight playlist, and have been exploring muddasheep’s wider discography including his album Desdemona just released this year!