Average of the Average

Average of the Average

By

Mike Hans STEFFL

Written by

Steve Sheppard

 

I still have fond memories of my first Mike Hans STEFFL album Calaboose Islands back in 2023; his style of electronic music resonates with me and through each and every track he has shared with me over the subsequent years, Mikes music has and still does grow on me each and every day. Now we have a new album to dive head long into, this project is called Average of the Average, celebrating the fact that it is ok to be average, especially in a world driven by an ever increasing demand for perfection and faultlessness.

Average of the Average is a 7 track electronic music album of exceptional quality, with a beautiful mixture of electronica, ambience and Berlin school all in the mix. Tracks like the opening piece called Repeated Irrevalence set the scene brilliantly with sweeping synths establishing a deeply powerful narrative from the off. STEFFL uses earthy clusters, overtones, organ-like sounds and electronic waves to create a kind of enclosed sonic space in a very impressive almost dark dream like opus.

The Berlin style is brought into full focus on pieces like Middle of Nowhere, after recognizing your dissatisfaction in “repeated irrelevance,” you reach the point where you don't know where you're going, which is beautifully emphasised in this arrangement and then onto Sequenced Arpverage, “ARP” points toward an arpeggiator, while “average” is embedded directly into the word. So the title essentially turns the idea of average into a piece of sequencing machinery, a very clever composition indeed.

One of my personal favourites as this next utterly transcending opus called Gaussian Dreams. Here lays a delicate pristine start, delicate chimes are added to by a gentle bass line and a slow progression of electronic notes, this reminded me in parts of another electronic musican in Thom Brennan.

Invisible Limits starts with a feeling of the mystical hovering in the back but centre of the piece, the synths manifest a swirling sense of wonder and appreciation in this long form narrative of over 13 minutes. After realizing that “average” might be acceptable, the next question becomes what actually prevents me from accepting it. This beautifully curated long form composition is exploratory and vast in its build and progression, but for its entirety holds the overall framing of ambience well within its musical walls.

The penultimate offering is Slanted Average; this track is almost like a clarion call to the masses. The synths here are powerful and fluent; they suggest a difference of perception, and once again allowing ambience and more heavily electronic vibrancy to coalesce with utter ease, perhaps the statement here is one of stop treating deviation from perfection as evidence that you are defective.

The concluding tale to be told is Standard Deviation and is another delicious long form arrangement, one that has a softer more inquisitorial beginning, in statistics, standard deviation measures how far observations tend to spread from the average, which makes this last composition from this quite outstanding album even more special, as the vastness of the pieces seems to create its own awareness and explore its own narrative quizzically as it goes, in style reminding me of experimental musical in the electronic field of Hanslik and Moinz.

Average of the Average by Mike Hans STEFFL is a thoroughly enjoyable listen, especially if you are a fan of electronic music like me, the artist lays seven canvases down to paint on musically and achieves his goal with aplomb, with performances that range from the sublime to the exploratory. Perhaps Mike Hans STEFFL’s Average of the Average can be understood as a meditation on mediocrity, individuality, acceptance, and the pressure to be exceptional, and thus creates a reality where averageness is enough.