Stefanie Schrank is a visual artist and musician from Cologne, Germany. As a part of various, rather guitar-centered band projects, she has been prominently contributing to German underground (and sometimes overground) pop music since the early 2000s until coming into her own with 2019’s solo debut „Unter der Haut eine überhitzte Fabrik“ (“Below the skin, an overheated factory”). There might be more than a geographic proximity to Kraut & kosmische innovators – the likes of Kraftwerk, Can, Harmonia and Neu! all hailing from the same region, not to mention Cologne’s eminent electronic music scene around labels such as “Kompakt” since the 1990s. On her first solo outing, she began using analogue synthesizers and vintage drum machines to assemble an original kind of pop music relying on fractured, fluid songwriting and angular, yet elegant grooves. Much critical acclaim, one global pandemic and an in-between EP later, she has quietly put together her sophomore effort FORMA.

Stefanie Schrank has condensed her approach into a new batch of songs oscillating between cinematically accelerating soundscapes (“Forma”, “The Big Kinship”), effervescent melodies (“Crossfade”, “Nein wir fürchten nicht die Nacht”) and coolly monotonous club rhythms (“Unruhig”, “Shapeshifter”). Schrank has been described as a love child of Julee Cruise and Kraftwerk, Roxette and Stereolab, Cocteau Twins and Laurie Anderson. All references aside, her new album FORMA manages with ease to be just as indebted to pop sensibilities as to experimentation and the sheer joy of sound. With production contributions from The Notwist producer Olaf Opal, her (and Caspar Brötzmann Massaker’s) longtime drummer Saskia von Klitzing and Kim Gordon collaborator Sarah Register, FORMA is a strange and strangely beautiful piece of sophisti-pop, interested both in the past and the future, formulating a sonic science fiction with murky origins and clear intent.