Drawing on influences from the early works of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, Blutiger Fluss craft moody electronic soundscapes that explore waves of tonal harmonics. With only four tracks to this album, the tunes are allowed ample room to flourish in a relaxed mode. While there is little variation among the sounds used to make the music, this similarity becomes a thematic device. The sterility of the Martian landscape is crisply captured and communicated. Pensive moods are evoked by the textural arrangement, layering harmonics to achieve a pacific demeanor tinged with otherworldly character.onic sustains, thicken the mix. As the song progresses, a sense of mobility is conveyed by the shifting tonalities, carrying the listener across kilometers of barren Martian landscape. Next, the music exhibits more complexity as several sonic tangents unfurl to define an undulant panorama of throbbing oscillations. A droning foundation provides a canvas for other threads, one an escalated cybernetic pulse, another a cascade of glittering unrhythmic e-perc, while keyboards introduce a series of gurgling chords to approximate the advent of light spilling across the crimson terrain. The final track displays a more somber demeanor. The undercurrent has a deeper voice, while the embellishments are distinctly reminiscent of those featured in the earlier tracks. Sweeping keyboard sustains, sharper pitched tones and pulsating chords oozing through the mix. A growling temperament prevails as the piece culminates. While there is little variation among the sounds used to make the music, this similarity becomes a thematic device. The sterility of the Martian landscape is crisply captured and communicated. Pensive moods are evoked by the textural arrangement, layering harmonics to achieve a pacific demeanor tinged with otherworldly character.
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BLUTIGER FLUSS
Dawn of Mars
CD-R, Sonneneruption Music, 2008  
 
Blutiger Fluss is the Iowa-based synthesizer duo Jeff Hutchison and Jim Duede, whose music is heavenly rooted in the early space music made at the start of the ‘70’s by Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream. 

Some influences of Mr Schulze are evident in the four long tracks, which have German titles, all containing strange, deep atmospheres which lack distinct melodies and only occasionally features some sequencer patterns.
The music itself isn’t heading in a distinct direction though, sometimes slightly riding along the abstract/experimental edge. 

This, in my opinion, makes this otherworldy music only suitable for experienced and adventurous ears. 
 
© Bert Strolenberg
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Most fans of vintage electronic music strive to make music like Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream made anywhere from 1975 to 1984 or so. The duo known as Blutiger Fluss aims more around 1972 to 1974, when freeform flowing electronics were the order of the day, before something called a sequencer became all the rage and seemed to define the genre ever after. Although Jeff Hutchison and Jim Duede formed the band in 2008, they have quite successfully created a sound rooted in origins some 35 years prior. Four lengthy drifting pieces of space music, all with German titles, harken back to a simpler yet more adventurous time in musical exploration. Though there are no beats or distinct melodies, the soundscapes are continuously shifting and changing. Perhaps best of all, the only thing Hutchison and Duede have truly copied is the spirit of that period of time in electronic music; the music itself is to my ears quite fresh and original. The sound is purely synthetic, thoroughly electronic. Though futuristic it also has a primal quality. It does not sound like Zeit or Phaedra, or Picture Music or Blackdance; it sounds like some new, undiscovered gem of a band from that time period has recently been unearthed. And in a way, I suppose it has.
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