»Urlaub Auf Balkonien« by Krill.Minima

Whether it’s Marsen Jules composing beautiful orchestral- ambient music using carefully sampled fragments of sound or krill.minima creating warm, exotic soundscapes from novel combinations of ambient, electronica, and dub, Martin Juhls is the German artist behind these well known aliases and the inviting, poignant, and atmospheric sounds. “Urlaub auf Balkonien” is Martin’s most recent netlabel release using his moniker krill.minima and is his second virtual album on Thinner under this guise.

It was four years ago that krill.minima made his debut netlabel appearance with the Thinner release “Zwischen zwei und einer Sekunde” surprising listeners and reviewers alike with its personal and inimitable experimental concoction of ambient and dub influences. Appropriately subtitled “exotic warm ambient dub”, the album opened up a whole new corridor of sound for those listeners who savored more experimental/unusual variations of electronic music. Other virtual albums by krill.minima appear on the Stadtgruen and Misamah netlabels along with physical releases on the Genesungswerk and Microcosm Music labels not to mention numerous remixes and compilation appearances on various labels.

With “Urlaub auf Balkonien”, krill.minima presents nine pensive songs of laidback, ambient-dub in its most refined form rich in elegiac melodies, reverbed chords, glassy pads, relaxed bass lines, warm vinyl hiss, and ever so gentle beats. In Germany, “Urlaub auf Balkonien” is an idiom that alludes to spending one’s summer holidays at home, and the album is thematically centered around taking pleasure in relaxed German summer days. However, “Urlaub auf Balkonien” goes beyond locale and ethos, having a more universal relevance, reflecting in sound a varied, introspective, and sensual array of summer moods, feelings, and images. As you listen to these songs, a layer of melancholic ambiance is evident. Drifting in and out, this melancholy is emblematic of the depression that arises as summer nears and the mind seeks respite from the dull routine of daily life. But embedded even deeper into the fabric of the songs is a more prevalent atmosphere of contentment. A holiday mood effortlessly manifests itself as the relaxed sounds redirect the mind away from the mundane to thoughts of carefree, warm days and balmy evenings.