Various

Brannten Schurre & Laüten der Seele mastermind Christian Schoppik pulls together a disparate range of margin-walking acts for a collection that simultaneously functions as a kind of calling card for his own entire artistic life. The term 'nebengleis' translates as 'side-track', and is a perfect conceptual foothold for a compilation that essentially presents as The World's Hidden Reverse. The 14 tracks collated here, drawn from names both familiar (Jonnine, Vox Populi, Limpe Fuch) and somewhat lesser known (Pariedo Wolv, Margot), cross generations and continents, but they all speak to a similar mindset of radical self-pursuit. If they are a side-track then they're also a confluence of interconnected desire lines, skirting the intersecting edges of drone, post- & ethno-industrial, neo-folk, dark wave and hard-to-pigeonhole avant garde in ways that feel determinedly singular. Do these artists sound alike? Not exactly, though nor are they entirely disconnected. And this is where we must give credit to Schoppik, who has been able to make sense of such far-ranging artistic pursuit - I'd not have thought to put the singer of HTRK alongside the ghosts-of-old-Europe folk drone of Lithuania's Skeldos or the bizarre nocturnal projections of California's NAVE, but here I am enjoying myself and learning something at the same time. Endeavours like this make the world that little bit bigger, shining light into corners we might not otherwise know existed. You could reasonably understand Musik vom Nebengleis as Schoppik's own NWW list, a means to make sense of the music he makes while also providing an alternative blueprint for a version of the world less explored, but with the vital caveat that this is no mere history lesson - these side-tracks, though occluded, run contemporaneously, a version of the world inside, outside or upside-down of the world. Consider this a portal.