Walter Benjamin begins his Berlin Childhood around 1900, a book in the form of a series of vignettes, with the following two sentences: "Not to find one’s way around a city does not mean much. But to lose one’s way in a city, as one loses one’s way in a forest, requires some schooling."

Entitled Tiergarten, after the eponymous park in central Berlin, this passage from Benjamin's memoir written in the 1930s which refers to the city as a sometimes alien piece of nature that you moonwalk through can still be resuscitated, even a century after the initial experiences described.

It may be tempting to describe the first collaborative album by Katharina Grosse and Stefan Schneider, titled Tiergarten as a collaboration of an internationally renowned visual artist and an equally internationally renowned musician. Grosse's distinctive approach to non-representational painting on an architectural scale, well beyond the limits of the canvas, has been the subject of exhibitions worldwide, at art institutions including New York's MoMA PS1, Chicago's Rennaissance Society, or the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. And Schneider's musical activities have gone from being a founding member of Dusseldorf outfit Kreidler, through his longtime commitment as a member of Berlin-based trio To Rococo Rot, to his many performances and recordings with musicians including Krautrock legends Hans-Joachim Roedelius (Cluster), Klaus Dinger (Kraftwerk, NEU!), and Hans-Joachim Irmler (Faust), or contemporary drumming virtuoso John McEntire (Tortoise, The Sea and Cake).

But while each of Grosse's and Schneider's activities have resonated around the globe, the rather technical, disengaged term "collaboration" seems inept to describe what they do together. Rather, it's a sort of almost telepathic understanding that has grown out of a long friendship. Tiergarten is an instrumental album of two performers on analogue synthesizers interacting, communica.......
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