"Strange things happened when Basel-based Georges Winter found himself in California. Ocean mists eroded his rhythmbox synth-pop and spirituality trespassed on his dry humor. Winter’s punchy song-smithing found unlikely kinship with a bleary kind of ambience. He called the results Feelmachine, an appropriate designation for a project that attempted, against all odds, to graft a West Coast sensorium to Euro keyboard robotics. Nonetheless, a very Swiss absurdism remained. Songs recorded “live on the beach” are obviously stock samples of crowds and breaking waves, for example. Only melody itself was safeguarded from this parody. Mitteleuropean new wavers like a good pop song when they hear it; as it happens, so do hippies. And so Winter could unleash his twinkly chord progressions and croon at full tilt, no diplomacy required."
