German native Malte Steiner, now living and creating in Aalborg, Denmark has been making electronic music with his Notstandskomitee project since 1991. As you might well imagine, Steiner has amassed an impressive discography, of which 2023's 'The Doomsday Layout' is the latest. On this instrumental album, somewhere between IDM and Industrial, Steiner conducts various experiments with his custom software, to find alternative ways of sequencing and controlling sound with stochastic algorithms and Neuronal Networks. All of these tracks were originally created between 2009-2023.

Being unfamiliar with the artist's past works, I delved a bit into Notstandskomitee's previous albums available for preview on Bandcamp. (Gotta love Bandcamp for this feature.) Interestingly, Notstandskomitee collaborated with Thomas Meier-Goldau's THX 1971 project (reviewed here previously by me) on the 2021 'Elektrofusion' album, which shouldn't come as much of a surprise since they're both in Aalborg. The one commonality shared by previous Notstandskomitee albums and most of the tracks on them is the rhythmic component which figures strongly in Steiner's compositions. These rhythms are usually elaborate and complex, with an intriguing variety of sounds, both crunchy and quirky, not just the usual array of percussion. With few exceptions, the rhythm of a track seems to be more important than the melody in these compositions.

That being said, 'The Doomsday Layout' opens with a simple but bold repetitive melodic theme on "The Writing On The Wall" with an experimental rhythm track that supports rather than dominates. "Umspannerwerk" is a nod to krautrock if I ever heard one; steadily minimal but very cool. By the time we get to "Expertensystems" I'm realizing that Steiner is giving his compositions more room to breathe sounding less claustrophobic than in the past. While "Threat Actor" had some interesting sounds, the sort of stilted rhythm left me cold. Much better (and longer) was "Rules Replacing Trust" with a more engaging rhythm and upbeat synthetic bits. The martial rhythm of "The Logic Of War" sounds like Lego robots on the march (if you could imagine such a thing) and "They Work On Something" could be busy nanobots. In an album full of unusual tracks, "Alarmierende Zustande" stands out as one of the weirdest. "Separatorenfleisch" has the hallmarks of a vintage video game. Of the remaining tracks, some are more interesting than others, but if you've gotten this far and stuck with it, then you probably already have some affinity with this album. I highly doubt you will get all you can out of it in a single listening session, so the replay factor is high on 'The Doomsday Layout.' That this album goes against the grain of most electronic music made these days is a big plus.