"Still flying under the radar but already something of a cult figure, Baldruin has patiently shaped a singular musical world where mystical synth folk meets a deeply personal vision of traditional music, drawing equally from Eastern and Western sources. On Aventüren, Johannes Schebler expands this universe even further, offering a unique take on musical minimalism refracted through his own dreamlike aesthetic.

Raised in the rectory of a small Bavarian village, Schebler spent his childhood as an altar boy, surrounded by the daily resonance of church bells, organ drones and sacred choral music. Those formative experiences left a lasting imprint. As a teenager, he discovered a similar sense of transcendence in Surrealist painting and experimental cinema, eventually finding a musical counterpart in the visionary works of Popol Vuh and Klaus Schulze. Although Baldruin is occasionally associated with the Krautrock tradition, his artistic kinship with Katie Rich and Christian Schoppik of Brannten Schnüre offers a more revealing point of reference. Long-time friends and collaborators, Rich and Schoppik have developed a distinctive language where traditional song forms intertwine with looping techniques and experimental composition. Schebler has worked alongside them in Freundliche Kreisel (Stroom Records) and Diamantener Oberhof (Vrystaete), collaborations that, combined with his parallel projects like Grykë Pyje or Yayoba, offer a far more revealing perspective on Baldruin's aesthetic.

Since 2009, across more than a dozen releases, Schebler has built a remarkable musical cosmology: dreamlike pastoral compositions suspended between light and shadow, rooted in ancient traditions yet reaching toward imagined futures. Working with an ever-expanding collection of instruments, he subtly reshapes their timbres through electronic processing, revealing unexpected textures and uncanny colours. Over fourteen pieces spanning just over forty minutes, Aventüren unfolds through a rich palette of marimba, glockenspiel, strings, percussion and countless other acoustic voices. Loquacious chamber-pop miniatures give way to hypnotic rhythmic cycles and soaring melodic figures, with each piece shifting effortlessly from intimacy to grandeur, from folk ritual to contemporary composition. The result is music whose minimalist foundations paradoxically produce a lush, almost maximalist effect.

Like Susumu Yokota reimagining Music for 18 Musicians on Gekkoh, Baldruin approaches American minimalism not as a style to emulate but as a language to reinvent. Echoes of Steve Reich and Philip Glass emerge throughout the record, yet never in the austere forms usually associated with their work. Instead, Schebler embraces a baroque, kaleidoscopic imagination populated by sounds that seem to belong to an invented folklore. Something strange is happening behind the rectory." - Christophe Taupin