Despite the cover's showing a little girl (the CD title means "Shadow girl"), which wasn't making me suppose to find the kind of music I'm going to talk you about, Apoptose's SCHATTENMÄDCHEN is a well done mix of dark ambient / electronic music with great sounds (you can also find some industrial sounds here and there) and a very deep and involving ambience. The album collects old reworked tracks (the opening "Asche" was titled "Eichensiechtum" on "Infernal proteus", "Ba-137m" was originally titled "137Cs" when released on the "Statement 1961" compilation while "2wei sonnen" had its original version released on "Solaris collaboration" as well "...und null sekunden" which originally was released as "Null" on "...in the crystal cage") and three new tracks ("Violet silence", "Schattenmädchen" and "Karla") which with the new version of the old tracks form a strong work which is taking you through hypnotic places made of drones, humming loops, rumbling noises and spoken word vocals. Concerning the spoken word parts, we have Kenji Siratori (this is the third CD I received this month which sees Kenji's participation) as guest on the main track. Getting back to the music issue, I have to tell you that also synth pads have played a large part on this album and they create a dense layer which help so much into the creation of the sound-scape created. Tension also is a great element onto Apoptose's music and is good to see how it has been used. Check "Ba-137m", for example: see how the tension/noise grows during its nine minutes just to be released on the last two minutes, here the noise decrease but there's always a certain feeling of disturbance in the air. You can find some excerpts on Apoptose's website. Check them out...