Konrad Sprenger, the alias of Berlin based musician Jörg Hiller, first caught our eye back in 2004 with his brilliant duo LP Ort, made with Ellen Fullman. In the years since, he has slowly issued a series of beautiful solo efforts, as well as collaborations within the ensembles of Arnold Dreyblatt, Oren Ambarchi, and others. To date, Sprenger’s practice has displayed a remarkable versatility - shifting between conventional and custom instrumentation and electronics - experiments tracing new territories, embedded with deceptive allusions to the known. Across his latest effort Stack Music, his first LP to appear within Pan’s already formidable catalog, everywhere he’s been seems to have been shattered to the floor.

In an era increasingly defined by the reissue and the archival release, Sprenger cuts through the fog - proving the present is as rich as any point in the past. Stack Music represents a huge leap for the artist - appearing the better part of a decade since his last release. Good things come for those who wait. The album is nothing short of a stunning marvel - focused and refined, with every element locked into place, a rigorous statement unto itself. Drawing on a long frustration with the limits of traditional instruments and their techniques, Stack Music’s four works are the culmination of a long arc - a process begun by Conlon Nancarrow in the 1940’s, and reinvented in Sprenger’s hands. The album is the product of a computer-controlled multi-channel electric guitar, its rhythmic patterns the result of the Euclidean algorithm - sculpting a music which is entirely connected to the history of Minimalism, while rocketing it forward to the future and present day.

While technically mechanical music, the sounds of Stack Music are drenched in humanity and touch. Strings bounce, resonate, and converse - issuing startling surprise which leaves the listener immersed in a singular rhythmic ambient world, and on the edge of their seat. These are the sonic heights of a contemporary art - the product of intense rigor and thought, where ideas fall behind the sounds and interactions they produce. A high water mark for its artist, which leaves you longing for more.