Vital Weekly (NL)

Sogar’s third album, after his previous works on List and his debut on 12k and I must admit his least one, mainly because I don’t see that much progress. Sogar, aka Jurgen Heckel, born in Germany but now living Paris, produces software based music, which moves nicely along in small rhythmical patterns and high pitched melodies. Each of these nine songs is worth hearing, but they are also interchangeable. Sometimes a bit more noisy or harsher (at least in the general realms of this kind of music anyway), but it ticks nicely away. And in that sense, Sogar made already two nice albums of likewise material, so why add a third one? Why not explore the boundaries of this sound, or move in other directions, add more rhythm, or maybe skip rhythm entirely? Now it sounds more like a bunch of Max/Msp plug ins, processing the same sound file. I may sound negative on this, but be assured: it’s a nice album, at least if you don’t hear that much of this kind of music. [Frans de Waard]