Hauschka - PingOn Salon des Amateurs, Hauschka explores the more emphatically rhythmic aspects of past songs like "Rode Null" or "Schönes Mädchen" (both on Ferndorf). It seems like at some point Bertelmann took a step back and decided he wanted to pull apart his music and look very carefully at the different components he found--thus Foreign Landscapes in the fall, which was controlled, precise, and pretty, and now Salon des Amateurs, which augments the percussive elements of prepared piano with outside drums and an intense low end. Where FL was hibernal and calm, SdA is rousing, warm, dramatic. "Ping" is a good example of what Bertelmann is doing on the album: this song starts with an interesting melodic idea, introduces another one, then elaborates on those ideas--though here, the drums come in, the song recollects itself around the two-minute mark, and everything shifts. Light static in the background, drums are now imperious, piano submissive. Most of the songs on Salon des Amateurs feel like that--like proofs that go off in unexpected directions, yielding new answers.[Buy Salon des Amateurs]