Natural Element - Max Graef

Max Graef returns to Tartelet Records with Natural Element, a genre-bending listening trip pitched towards bass-heavy daydreaming and sensitive dancefloor escapades. Out June 14.

The trailblazing German producer is back, this time applying his sparkling flair and infectious appeal to the widescreen spectrum of psychedelic, starry-eyed jams of his third album, comfortably nestled into a bean bag in the backroom.

Natural Element coincides with the 10th anniversary of his revered debut LP Rivers of the Red Planet, which remains a cherished high watermark for label and artist alike. It also serves to highlight how much time has passed, and how much has changed. 2018’s follow-up Lo Siento Mucho Pero No Hablo Tu Idioma was a step into many other musical approaches and made clear Graef didn’t want to rest on the broad appeal of his earlier funked-up, jazz-sampling house sound. Natural Element is the sound of an artist more at ease with the parts of his legacy which hold true, and those he wants to let go of.

But there absolutely is funk to be found on Natural Element. It’s in the low-slung chill-out of ‘Sports (Is Good For You)’ and the nagging synth-slap-bass underpinning ‘Around The Globe’. But the glue which holds the album together across all kinds of tempos and energies is a shimmering, organic psychedelia — dreamy chords and artful sonic brushstrokes which gleam out of the mix. It’s a quality universal across the aqueous beauty of tropical breakbeat roller ‘We are the World (Test Drive)’ and the cascading slo-mo ecosystem of album-opening double-act ‘Sound Bytes’ and ‘Zitar’.

The process on Natural Element was one of reflection for Graef, who has been plenty busy with his TAX FREE label and the spider’s web of offbeat collaborations and projects which orbit it. The freewheeling quality of that outlet helps inform the freedom which Graef brings to this album. Initially a mixtape concept to gather up recent ideas, it soon evolved as he got deeper into MPC sketches and reconnected with the approach he had when he was in his late teens.

“After the sketches I worked a lot with the computer again, which I haven’t done in years,” Graef reveals. “Intensive MIDI work and arrangement, but especially working with elements of the sketches in all possible ways, going back and forth with analog and digital equipment, pitching, time-stretching, really soaking up the beautiful inspiration of limitation.”

Taking a patchwork approach but pushing himself to make use of all elements from the initial sessions, Graef wound up with an album which still retains a certain scrappy mixtape quality, but equally represents his artistic approach in the here and now as a richly developed listening trip.

“The new album is in many ways a more grounded version and display of my musical universe,” he explains. “In some ways it is a transmitter and vehicle of my sound world, because I also like to go much wilder into exploring different approaches and ways of making music nowadays, but it is also very honest since it evolved so naturally in the process.”

Casting one ear back to that landmark debut LP feels like listening to an entirely different epoch, not just for Graef but for music as a whole. What’s heartening is that the magic which made Graef stand out back then is still absolutely present and correct in his new guise. It would be far less rewarding if he was just trotting out more of the same formula, after all. As he says himself:

“There is nothing worse than stagnation and conformism. I still am the same person, my ideals and values have not changed much, but my influences and approaches have.”