Touted by the German music press as the “German Portishead”, Sankt Otten cover a far broader ground than their English trip hop brethren. Traversing the realm of noirish cinematic pop, Sankt Otten draw inspiration from such musical inventors as - Morricone, John Barry, Talk Talk - and the modern adaptors - Portishead, Bohren und der Club of Gore, David Holmes.
Their first album for Hidden Shoal Recordings, “Wir können ja Freunde bleiben” (Let’s Remain Friends), is an intensely orchestrated, creamily thick bed of electronic soundscapes, slow-motion drums and the twanging noir guitars of Oliver Klemm (of “Pendikel” fame), winding through the recordings like a thin red line. If Morricone collaborated with Talk Talk, the result would sound something like this.
