300 copies. Three years after his debut Miniaturen, the Berlin-based composer and producer Konrad Sprenger - real name Jörg Hiller - returned in 2009 with Versprochen, his second solo album and first for the Italian imprint Schoolmap. Where the earlier record traded in short, clipped statements, this one stretches out into a longer, more spatial scale, twelve pieces with evocative German titles given room to unfold across darker emotional registers. The word Versprochen itself sits somewhere between "pledge", "promise", and "slip of the tongue".

Sprenger's working method involves years of careful studio production with a network of professional musicians and friends from other disciplines, and the album moves restlessly through textures - the prolonged whistle of a steam train opening into the layered guitar tones of Lethe, foley-style exchanges, clockwork birdsong, exquisite brass figures, jazzy mellotron chords, and a closing player-piano hoedown. Contributors include Thomas Ankersmit, Gavin Russom, and Ernst Karel.

Sprenger's day job as a producer has brought him into the orbit of Ellen Fullman, Arnold Dreyblatt, Robert Ashley, and Terry Fox; his performing CV includes work with Ethnostress, Ei, and the Honey-Suckle Company art group. Versprochen distills all of this into something idiosyncratic and personal, a record whose attention to detail gives even its strangest gestures a tactile, luminous presence. Issued as a vinyl LP in an edition of 300 copies, with neo-gothic cover art by Dirk Bell, mastered and cut by Rashad Becker.