Leonardo Rosado:

"Hanne Adam aka adamned.age is a well-known figure in the netlabel scene, and has been extremely kind to offer us her work for several years now. “After the rain” is her new album – the second release at PublicSpaces Lab.

Personally, I have been following her work for a couple of years now, and what it strikes the most is the care and passion she puts on each and every release she makes. Which is the same to say, you can’t miss this one.  The other aspect I find interesting is that though she maintains her line of work tight (you can almost know if adamned.age is playing in your player), through the course of the years the production of her music as become more and more velvety and soft, which isn’t to say that it has become boring, on the contrary. The dynamics inside each music, the glitches, beats, and other synths all work together unified and are extremely appealing.

Trip-hop or whatever you want to call adamned.age slow beat music filled with smoke and glitches is a landmark in the netlabel scene. “After the rain” continues her path, surprisingly, in a much brighter and almost joyful way (like indicating that after the rain comes the good weather). After the rain is an album focused on rhythm, and listening to the several tracks you find Hanne exploring and highlighting several different styles.

After the first 3 tracks where rhythm points the way, she presents us with what could be considered a glitchy music box song, to offer us a beautiful jazz tune in storiette for reflection, and finishing off with the title track After the rain, an epilogue, or maybe a prologue for a next release.

Enjoy another fine Adamned.age release, as it surely is another great addition to her work.

naxtosobrado.com (spanish)

Qué maravilla ha sido encontrarme con este disco de adamned.age titulado After The Rain y publicado por el netlabel español Publicspace Lab.

Desconocía ambos nombres pero en una de mis búsquedas infinitas por Discogs (esta vez buscando discos de Field Recording) acabé dando con este trabajo que vuelve a recuperar lo mejor de la IDM de los 90, de Aphex Twin y su posterior sello Rephlex con Grant Wilson-Claridge como compañero. El sonido suave del Ambient de la escuela de alva noto, en especial de sus últimos movimientos al piano con Ryuichi Sakamoto -por cierto, enorme disco el Summvs (2011, Raster-Noton) de este año. Y así podría seguir mencionado a algunos de mis favoritos pero ya os hacéis una idea.

En After The Rain el Glitch campa a sus anchas con una clase que da gusto. adamned.age es Hanne Adam, una alemana (qué raro ¿no?) cuya discografía ya estoy tardando en escuchar. Este disco es de mis favoritos de 2011.

Vincent Fugère (Camomille music):

"Hanne Adam's emotionally dense music under adamned.age is rightfully becoming a netlabel must. She offers here an incredible full length; the rolling & glitchy beat becomes the framework for her carefully put-together constructs. She reveals parts of tracks in layers or blocks, like musical architechture and sometimes lets them breathe and grow by themselves as you witness their rigidity slowly turn into an organic, pulsating organism.
The result is an impressive collection of songs, constantly flowing and progressing towards a more complex state; a research in attaining the perfect balance between movement and stability."


Review by Sethmol Records:

"Hanne Adam’s Fragile is a remedy for any disjointed soul. A true ambient adventure involving traditional instruments that can bring you back down from that ledge and soothe your every pain. She has created 8 atmospheric lullabies for the mind that won’t lull you to sleep. Instead, they center your brain and clear out all the cobwebs festering inside from years of modern day anguish.

By combining classical piano, drum machine beats, minor distortion and reverberated swells, adamned.age has given us a way to accept the terrors of our current age. This acceptance is only temporary, though. Once listening has concluded, you emerge from the cocoon she weaved for you with a burning desire to alter the world drastically. This feeling was present before but nowhere near as prominent.

These songs are true candy for your ears. Clicks and pops form the beats that bounce back and forth between your eardrums, using your brain as a causeway. There are moments throughout that are so beautiful I am almost moved to tears. It’s releases like these that remind us what music is really all about: an extension of our souls, meant to calm our tattered minds and make us whole again."

Review by Mystified (Thomas Park)

"One outstanding feature about Adamned Age is that her brand of IDM/jazz/ambience has inspired both people I agree with and people I don’t. What I mean to say is, there is something transcendent about Hanne Adam’s musical project. And of all the many acts I have heard online, she is perhaps the most worthy of some kind of professional recognition.

“Fragile”, released on the excellent Camomille Netlabel, takes some familiar sounds and extends them nicely. Synth bells, glitchey sounds, washes, and other elements are familiar to fans of adamned.age. But in this release, the composition sends the sounds into a spacier realm, where tension is manifested and released, and where swirls of sound relate magically to one another in ways that are pleasing to the ear. I often found myself, while listening, thinking, “Did THAT work? Yes, it DID!”.

Where some artists have resorted to cheap tricks or machismo, Hanne Adam contrinues to sketch her portrait in the world of music with painstaking detail. She is a worthy artist, and one who unites critics, until all or nearly all agree that she has achieved something noteworthy with her work. Listen or download now..."


Review by Leonardo Rossado (subterminal)

"adamned.age aka Hanne Adam is one of the reasons why you should never think that the free world of netlabels is void of brilliant music. 2011 has arrived only now, but there is already a great candidate to best of the year release. 

adamned.age reached a point where her albums are always a must listen, the imagery of beauty and decay have been for a long time her central element, and "fragile" her most recent release is no different. The glitch beats and the bright tones are blended in a soulful mixture, and a classic trip hop album emerges from this release. Hanne even presents you with some piano tunes, that give a brighter color and an uptempo feel to the second track "Interstellarraum". By now, her work is thoroughly meticulous, full of a clinical precision and focus on the feelings she’s presenting. 

Trip hop at its finest moments. Don’t miss this gorgeous free release."

Review by Thomas Raukamp:

I am still surprised to learn that even some of my closest fellow netaudio enthusiasts never heard the name of Hanne Adam or her musical solo project ‘adamned.age‘. To me, Hanne is one of the most important and creative figures of an ever evolving scene, that still hasn’t reached it’s

limits – and so hasn’t Hanne. When I first discovered her music, I was attracted by the fine sound design art that runs through all of her works. While cold at first glance, all her compositions are never repellent, in fact they contain a common hypnotic element that opens the door to deeper and deeper explorations that will never let you go again.

Like every great composer Hanne is an extremely fine observer, an attribute she also lives out in her work as a photographer. Together with her ‘partner in crime’ Tanja Dovens, better known as ‘Die Minimalistin’ to some lovers of fascinating drones and soundscapes, she is a part of Berlin’s ‘Urban Exploration’ scene, where she haunts in abandoned places in the eastern part of the city, which by now haven’t been found by investors or carpetbaggers to turn those pearls into money making appartments or expensive spas for the upper class of Germany’s lavish reborn capital.

The pictures Hanne takes as well as the feelings she carries home convert to sounds, melodies and compositions that give these places an everlasting memorial far beyond the mere photographic moment.

But there is another driving, darker force behind Hannes Adam’s music and her often abstract and bleak sound design: Pain, whether physical or emotional, has been a constant companion on her path through life and art. “Music sometimes was the only language that gave that pain a voice, the only thing that literally kept me in this life“, she confessed during a conversation we had in November 2009. It is in these precious moments of composing, of feeling that special occasion when a very private emotion transforms into a sound, when Hanne enters into a world without constant struggle and forgets about the defeats she suffers against enemies she can’t win against in her real life. It might be considered a sweet irony of her life that it is this pain, that actually leads her to her highest artistical summits. And her wise smile showed me she knows about this antagonism very well.

It is my pleasure to witness one of the most precious jewels of today’s netaudio scene coming together with one of the most caring netlabels around for the best release adamned.age had so far. Enjoy every sound, beat and emotion this musical giant has for you.

Thomas L. Raukamp in December 2009


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