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Reviews

Markus Reuter & Stefano Castagna — Sea of Hopeless Angels
(Unsung UR022, 2023, DL)

Markus Reuter & Stefano Castagna — Sky on the Ground
(Iapetus UR026, 2025, CD / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2026-01-03

Sea of Hopeless Angels Cover artSky on the Ground Cover art

Markus Reuter and Stefano Castagna both appeared on Mask of Confidence (2023), where Castagna was a member of the band and Reuter was a guest. On these two albums, the pair work entirely on their own, with Reuter on his usual Touch Guitar and looping while Castagna contributes synths, bass, samples, vocals, and percussion on Sea of Hopeless Angels — on Sky on the Ground, other instruments (harmonium, acoustic guitar, glockenspiel) are mentioned without specifying who played what. In 2022, while focussed on the initial recordings for Anchor & Burden, Reuter took a break and recorded a set of solo pieces on Touch Guitar using relatively clean tones as a contrast to what he’d been doing. He passed those recordings on to Castagna, who listened to the tracks and added his own supporting parts where it seemed they would add constructively to the whole. He says he was inspired by two past duo recordings, I Advance Masked by Robert Fripp and Andy Summers and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Brian Eno and David Byrne, though Sea of Hopeless Angels has little in common with either of them stylistically. Given that Castagna was working with existing semi-ambient improvisations, most of the tracks don’t have a consistent pulse or much in the way of rhythm, but there is harmonic movement at times, and a good sense of ebb and flow. On the title track, random clicks and clinks decorate the background like wooden wind chimes in a slight breeze, and synths add chordal context and occasional countermelodies to the Touch Guitar lead. The album works quite nicely as a calmly meditative outing, with more interest than unadorned improvisations would have.

For their second outing, they made a conscious decision to do something different, and in this case the goal was to create concise pieces including vocals in the mix. Underlying much of the music there are more Reuter improvisations, this time sourced from his extensive archive of recordings over many years, but they have been substantially altered by chopping them into pieces and using them as raw material for experimentation rather than inviolable basic tracks. The eleven tracks began as remote collaborations, but when the two got together to listen to the tracks, they were inspired to embellish the music with additional instruments and voices. The result is not as song-oriented as Mask of Confidence, but much more structured and accessible than Sea of Hopeless Angels. The wider variety in instrumentation plus the inclusion of lyrics makes the album quite successful in all ways. I spoke with Reuter recently, and he said that he’s rediscovering the importance of melody in music, and this album certainly shows that. This is a very enjoyable way of bringing experimental sounds and techniques into what can broadly be considered pop music, and a couple of the tracks, like “A Shadow between Us,” “The Shape of Tomorrow,” and the title track, feature eminently catchy grooves – and incidentally approach the styles of the duo albums that Castagna cited as influences or inspirations. Between these two albums, I’ll admit to a clear preference for the second, but both are worthy additions to a collection.

Filed under: New releases, 2023 releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Markus Reuter, Stefano Castagna

More info
http://reutercastagna.bandcamp.com

 

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