Planes In Reverse

With the stunning Planes In Reverse, Sascha Funke, the Berlin-born producer and
DJ, and long-time member of the Kompakt family, releases his first album in almost a
decade, since 2017’s Lotos Land. It’s a welcome return for one of the most eloquent
and elegant producers in electronic and dance music, someone who’s always been
able to say more with less, and the ten tracks here, moving effortlessly between
techno, house, minimalism, disco house, and home listening tunes, are all
gorgeously sculpted miniatures. With guest appearances from partner Julienne
Dessagne (Fantastic Twins), with whom Funke has also worked in Saschienne,
there’s something homely and family about it, too; a family of sounds, a home of
tone.

There’s also something consummate about Planes In Reverse, as though Sascha
Funke has perfected the album format. There’s no flab here, no excess – it plays out
like a perfectly designed experience, ten tracks, coming in under fifty minutes, an
album where every moment matters. It’s full of variety, but everything has the
unmistakable Funke thumbprint, one that was developed during the late ‘90s / early
‘00s minimal techno and microhouse moment, but which was always open to other
ideas and other sounds, too.

Planes In Reverse came together quickly for Funke: “Last winter, I had two or three
new tracks, which gave me a core feeling: ‘Ah, this could be the direction of
something like an album.’ Sometimes it can be very easy that you wrap it up and
then it becomes something coherent and solid. This happened within two or three
months; it was very fast and direct.” Everything fell into place – the ten tracks
revealed themselves, the album sat together as a whole, and the final piece of the
puzzle was returning home again to Kompakt, who have supported Sascha Funke
from the very start, releasing his first single, “Campus”, back in 1999.

Planes In Reverse opens stealthily with “What You See”, where rhythms percolate
and bass prowls while gaseous textures fill the sonic spectrum. It’s also the first
appearance of Fantastic Twins on the album; here, she speaks a hypnotic mantra, a
prelude to the title track, where Dessagne has a pure pop moment, her voice ecstatic
and vibrant. Indeed, Planes In Reverse plays out like thesis and antithesis ending in
synthesis, the tracks nestling next to each other even as they shuttle between
sounds, genres, perspectives.

There are some beautiful moments dropped throughout Planes In Reverse – the
heavenly textures that make the title track feel so cloud-bound; the glassy and orbital
tones that drop from the skies through the disco house inspired “Karat”; the clamour
and clatter of hyper-edited voices shuffling through “Splitter”; or the field recordings
of Sascha’s son football training session that drop “Zockers” into a different place
and space, slowly giving way to a beautifully paced electro-pop mantra. “In Germany, when the kids play a computer game, or when they play football, we describe it as
zocken. They’re the players, they’re the Zockers.“ Funke explains.

Planes In Reverse winds down with the beautiful “Kruso”, where ticklish, loving
arpeggios careen around the room, and drift-work chords shimmer and shuttle
between your ears. It’s a perfect comedown to an album that feels breathes in and
out at an organic pace, nothing above 130 BPM, everything sitting together just so.
Indeed, that’s the feeling you take away from Planes In Reverse; it sums up the spirit
of Sascha Funke productions perfectly, while also existing beautifully as its own
world dreamt unto itself. It’s Sascha Funke down to the very essence. Nothing
unnecessary, nothing extraneous: Pure Funke.