Apparat – A Hum Of Maybe: Album Review

Live4ever 19 February, 2026

Artwork for the Apparat album A Hum Of Maybe

3.5 starsss

Apparat’s two finest moments on ‘A Hum Of Maybe’ are uncoincidentally where the vista opens up to collaborators.

Everyone knows the freaks.

It’s a facet of human nature that usually with time, a little practice and familiarity we either get used to or get better at something.

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But the freaks? They just do it right from the off, sometimes just one thing – thank the maker – but on rare occasions it seems like they can do anything they want without needing to learn it first.

For Sascha Ring, aka Apparat, it appeared on the surface that he might be the second sort of guy.

With 2019’s LP5 bagging a Grammy nomination and a parallel career making leftfield techno with Modeselektor on side project MODERAT, it seemed like nothing could be unlearned and by extension nothing could derail him.

The unexpected pinch point came after a 2023 world tour with Moderat. At its conclusion, as he returned to what passes for normality – his domestic sanctuary in Berlin, his family and newly born daughter – everything stalled.

For two long years beyond that point the internal pressure began to mount, not in the guise of anything as conventional as writer’s block, but a more profound, creative blackout which left him worrying if he would ever compose again.

The solution was radical: to write a song a day, every day, free, as the album’s accompanying notes explain, ‘from pressure, judgement and the pursuit of perfection’.

Little by little, the scattered jigsaw pieces would become a series of whole ideas, the resolutions of which form Apparat’s new album A Hum Of Maybe.

The title is a conscious nod to the fundamentals of existence in turbulent, dark-clouded times, and having the resolve to recognise the ambiguity as something which – viewed through one lens at least – has a potential for moving forward.

It makes for an intriguing study, but Sascha Ring’s melded conscious and subconscious minds do not offer up any kind of immediacy or instant understanding.

Opener Glimmerine begins with a gentle piano and slow, tumbling, distorted crescendos, an environment which lovers of Bonobo will be instantly familiar with.

The title-track perfectly showcases A Hum Of Maybe’s fascination and flaws; an exploration of being trapped inside your own head, the gently lilting parts – brushed drums, desultory bass, elegant piano – beautifully frame lyrics such as, ‘Rooms felt too small, time folded in strange ways, and every sound seemed to hum with doubt’.

The effect though is to cocoon Ring further, of listeners being kept on the periphery and getting one way messages they have no means to decode.

Similarities to Bon Iver’s later electronic excursions emerge, particularly on the diaphanous synths of Lunes, whilst the minimalist beats, pads and echoes of remorse backdrop the gradually decaying orbit of a relationship on An Echo Skips A Name.

The two finest moments here are uncoincidentally where the vista opens up to collaborators.

Here, Armenian American singer KÁRYYN swims in the warmer overtures conjured up by memories of Ring’s wedding (“Faith, fear, family — all tangled in one breath”), albeit ever seen in an abstract frame.

It’s the ruminations of Pieces Falling – the guest this time being Berlin/Rome-based musician Jan-Philipp Lorenz, aka Bi-Disc – which matches emotion to compulsion.

Wrapped up in an affecting spell that echoes Colour Of Spring-era Talk Talk, its starkness and percussive clatter should be mutually exclusive but such is the apparent gravity, the most basic of connections is hard to deny.

Freaks can do anything, but most of us are going through our existence learning, forgetting, re-learning and never quite getting it right.

A Hum Of Maybe is Sascha Ring’s rediscovering his most basic truths. It’s not perfect, but what is?

Andy Peterson

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Tags:andy peterson, apparat