Via the always amazing Black Truffle, at long last, Konrad Sprenger, the alias of Berlin based musician Jörg Hiller, returns with “Set”, his first solo offering since 2017’s widely celebrated Stack Music. A polyrhythmic, tonally complex wonder - featuring brilliant contributions by Oren Ambarchi - it’s nothing short of a wild and wonderful ride that will leave you coming back for more, again and again.

From its humble beginnings back in 2009, Oren Ambarchi's imprint, Black Truffle, has steadily picked up the pace and emerged as one of the most exciting labels working within the field of experimental sound. Guided by an artist’s ear, it’s delivered an incredible stream of contemporary and archival releases from David Rosenboom, Alvin Lucier, John Duncan, Tony Conrad, Crys Cole, Keiji Haino, Annea Lockwood, Marja Ahti, Kassel Jaeger, MEV, AMM, Charlemagne Palestine, Alvin Curran, Will Guthrie, Olivia Block, Richard Teitelbaum, and numerous others. While the scope, ambition and breadth within Black Truffle’s output is unparalleled - casting far afield across time and a diversity of practices - running through their catalog is a clear vision of collaboration, community, friendship, family, and mutual respect between the artists in Ambarchi's world.

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. Over the years since, he has slowly issued a series of beautiful solo efforts - most notably Stack Music, issued by Pan back in 2017 - as well as collaborations within the ensembles of Arnold Dreyblatt, Oren Ambarchi, and others, not to mention the absolutely brilliant “Modular Organ System” LP, made in 2023 with Phillip Sollmann. As an instrument builder, installation artist, musician, and composer, Sprenger’s practice displays a remarkable versatility, shifting between conventional and custom instrumentation and electronics - notably a computer-controlled multi-channel electric guitar and the modular pipe organ system created with Phillip Sollmann - endlessly pursuing experiments tracing into new territories. His latest, “Set”, quickly illuminates how far these pursuits have pushed him since his last solo outing in 2017.

Rooted in Sprenger’s scientific approach to acoustic phenomena and threaded with his signature pop sensibility and sly sense of humour, “Set” is performed by the composer and the mysterious Ensemble Risonanze Moderne, with fantastic contributions by Oren Ambarchi. A single work in two parts - one per side of the LP - marked by a strong sense of polyrhythm that fans of Sprenger’s work will already be familiar with, “Set” is constructed from a sparkling assemblage of electric guitars, acoustic instruments, percussion, electronics, and the mysterious hand of digital intervention that continuously blurs lines between acoustic and digital realms. Amounting to a highly ornamental, prog infused gesture of minimalism, the piece forms an entirely singular sonic universe over the course of its duration, throwing taste out the window with unexpected instrumental choices - shakuhachi and steel drums - folded into a palette of sparkling guitar harmonics and palm-muted notes, tuned percussion, crisp electronic drum hits, flashes of horns, and untraceable bursts of synthetic sound that are carefully folded into fascinating structures that simultaneously feel random and highly considered, reaching a constrained sense of fever-pitch and constrained drama via Ambarchi’s signature stuttering and swirling harmonics that weave their way through the piece’s second half.

Absolutely timeless, feeling radically forward thinking while rooted in a strong sense of the past, “Set” almost feels like a lost 1980s (or 90s) work from Crammed Discs’ legendary Made To Measure series. Nothing short of a stellar return to solo work for Konrad Sprenger, one thing’s for certain: we’re going to be spending a lot of time with this one during the months ahead.