Kraus Releases New Album, Water Music Feat. Focus Track ‘Home In The Mountains’
by Kraus · SCOOPAotearoa electronic musician Kraus returns with an 11-track album of weird and wonderful synth instrumentals, entitled Water Music.
The release features focus track, ‘Home in the Mountains’, which the artist describes as:
“A wistful synth-flute piece, which sets the tone for the album. It's a soundtrack for escaping the city, befriending woodland creatures, and hoping for magic to penetrate the veil of the mundane.”
Recorded in his home studio over the course of 2025, Water Music is a typically diverse collection, drawing on a wide range of film soundtracks and library music, psychedelic pop, the strangest fringes of contemporary European electronics, and folk music from around the world. Bubbly electronic percussion and shimmering synth textures abound, while lead single 'Princess from the Moon' is a nostalgic slice of bouncy 70s synth pop, reminiscent of German electronic trio Harmonia.
"It's my pleasure to introduce my new album Water Music, representing the results of my musical investigations over the course of 2025,” says Kraus.
"Here are some things I was thinking about during this period: traditional Japanese story "The Bamboo Cutter's Tale"; Enya's castle; Francesco Cavaliere's album "ALATA ONDA"; the sparrows in my bird feeder; Finland; synthetic flutes and bongos; George A. Romero's "Martin" (1977); Planetary Peace; this album's cover painting with its mysterious blue dome; Japanese gardens; "Puzzle Music" by Madalyn Merkey; and my desire to live in the forest with the elves."
Tracklist:
- Home in the Mountains
- The Floating World
- Bubble Blue
- Crystal Farmers
- Century of the Elf
- The Woodcutter's Tale
- Pure Waters
- Four Sparrows and a Bee
- Princess from the Moon
- River Ear/The Curtain
- Duck Wings
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Artist Bio:
Kraus (a.k.a. Pat Kraus) (he/him), is a prolific, independent producer of psychedelic music based in Tāmaki Makaurau in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Starting his musical life as a drummer in Ōtepoti bands such as The Futurians and The Aesthetics, Kraus has produced over two dozen solo releases since the turn of the millennium, most recently Crystal Motors (2024) and Seahorse Wedding (Music for Float Tanks) (2023). He has toured widely in Aotearoa, Australia and Europe, performing with several legendary figures in New Zealand contemporary music, including Shayne Carter, Peter Stapleton, Jeff Henderson, and Stefan Neville. In 2014 he founded the Musical Electronics Library, a free lending library of electronic musical instruments housed at The Audio Foundation.
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