Progressive Rock
MoonJune Records · 1 May 2026
The record opens with thirteen minutes and seventeen seconds. “In Search of the Miraculous” is the longest piece Stephan Thelen has put out under this banner, and the only one of the eight where everybody plays at once — Eivind Aarset, Markus Reuter on U8 touch guitar, Jon Durant, Stefan Huth on bass and Yogev Gabay on drums. At the far end of the album the same theme comes back stripped to three players and 4:09, with Aarset on soundscapes, Durant on fretless guitar and Thelen alone at the granular synth. Between the two there are forty-five minutes and ten seconds across six tracks, on a record that runs sixty-two thirty-six.
The technique the series is named for is a rhythmic delay run at a very high feedback level, which throws out cascading patterns in odd metres; there’s work here in 11/4, 9/4 and 13/4. Thelen is a mathematician and the guitarist in Sonar, and he started the project in 2015. What’s changed on this fourth volume is the name beside his: Reuter, one contributor among many on “Fractal Guitar 3”, is credited as co-producer here and plays on the opening track only.
Two pieces sit at the centre of the album and have almost nothing in common. On “Fractal Guitar Goes to Africa” (7:38) Thelen takes the horn arrangement, the kalimba and the celesta — nowhere else on the record — and Aarset switches to bass guitar. “Crossroads (for Bill Laswell)” (7:04) is the album’s other exception: in come Giri Subramaniam’s tabla and Durant’s acoustic. “Creatures of the Night” (7:51) has no drum kit at all: Andi Pupato carries it on framedrum, hihat and azzam bells.
“Phase 1 (Into the Darkness)” runs 5:58 and “Phase 2 (Into the Light)” 8:27, they’re sequenced back to back, and the credits are identical down to the line: the same six musicians, Fabio Anile’s Fender Rhodes on both, the same instrument list for Thelen. That’s fourteen and a half minutes with nothing new entering the room, right before a coda that does rethink the material.
It was recorded between March and December 2025 across eight cities — Bucharest, Oslo, Portland, Boston, Zurich, Rome, Berlin and Krefeld — after Thelen left Switzerland to live in Romania. The drums came from a single session, on 22 and 23 October at Ines Sound Studio in Bucharest. “Fractal Guitar 3” came out on 4 November 2022, which puts three and a half years between the two.
Rating: 8.0/10
Text by Guillem Cardós