Pneumatics by Orson Wells

Alvin Toffler was overwhelmed. When in the morning of October 4th, 1988–it was his 60th birthday–he was starring with a still somewhat absent look into a bowl of cornflakes, he thought that in the surface structure of the yellowish shimmering milk which was making an emulsion with the maple syrup and slowly but irreversibly corroding the crunchy crystals on the flakes, he could see through a window into a timeless dimension. Toffler, who at that time had reached the peak of his fames as a future scientist, was sustainably disturbed from his peek into this extra temporary peephole. In none of his books–“Future Shock” had just been released with yet another edition featuring a proud printed note on the book cover stating “more than 5 million copies in print”–did he ever mention this occurrence. Even after his death in June 2016, no note on this incident could ever be found in his estate. The “flake dimension” as Toffler called it in notes which were later shredded remains a secret of opaque, hard-to-grasp radiant power. Maybe it’s too simple to describe “Pneumatics“ as a creation coming from this cornflake world? Without doubt. Are there any more precise terms or instruments to determine the multifacetedness and beyond-timeliness of the “Pneumatics” soundscape? There are still unknown. “Pneumatics” is, after releases at Innervisions, Die Orakel und his own label Sound Mirror, the debut album of Orson Wells (as long as you don’t count in “Jupiter” – Wells’s first LP which was released in 2014 with 48 copies on cassette–have fun digging for rarities and bargains!).

Perhaps Wells, known in Frankfurt under his real name Lennard Poschmann and as an employee at the record store Tactile, is only a messenger. Or a psychic. The sound manifesto that he apparently transmits from Toffler’s secret dimension tells of a city of upside down pyramids (“Tianon”), of passes into the land of the five elements (“Multipass”) and dead straight four-to-the-floor lines which appear bended within the spherical dimension (“”Geodesic”). These beats are right on the heels of the ones of Intersteller Fugitives; the strings sound like that at any moment a vocal sample edited by Moodyman could warp over through the Cornflake wormhole. Pneumatics is the science of all technological applications powered by condensed and often by quite heated air. It is a matter of mechanics, compression, jackhammer, ramblings, high pressure levels, valves for blowing of steam. On “Pneumatics” it’s all about this. And more. Orson Wells’s album gets to the point of the post-retro futuristic state of the dancefloors of the house and techno clubs of this planet. It is like a peek into another dimension, right on the golden cut of spacetime geometry.