Dominik Eulberg

Minimal techno fans have been waiting patiently for a second album from Dominik Eulberg ever since his wobbly but deep take on the genre ignited both DJ booths and critics’ pens in 2005. Eulberg had released a debut in 2004, the fair Flora & Fauna, but it wasn’t until a full year later that his distinctive evolution of streamlined tech-trance began to hit its stride with a steady flow of singles that made him one of the most talked about names going. Now, he has issued Heimesche Gefilde, ostensibly a singles collection moonlighting as a sophomore record. Eulberg fans will already know what to expect and this set offers nothing more and nothing less than a selection of dark, trance-y tracks geared for the dance floor. Thus far, Eulberg is strongest as a singles man: the one-stop statement. The major flaw here, however, is not the music, which more than holds its own, rather it’s the insistence on injecting spoken word skits and bird calls in between each track. It’s a self-indulgent tactic that may highlight the producer’s daytime gig as a park ranger but does absolutely nothing to hold the album together. Instead, the listener ends up with an ingratiating stop-start rhythm that begs for the skip button in order to get to some prime cut dance music.