ADVENTURE
Adventure
CAK45
Carpark 2008
11 Tracks. 37mins19secs

Carpark Records artists are kind of like games for a Nintendo Wii.  There’s more than enough cuteness to go around, some hipsters stuck in kidulthood, and lots of far-out nonlethal weaponry (read: lo-fi and chip tune synths).  There’s even a Mario figure, in the form of mascot / oddity / unsettling manchild Dan Deacon.  If this metaphor is to be carried even further (and guess what – it is!) then someone needs to be Link, the little questing elfin hero from the Zelda series.  So, why the hell not, how about Benny Boeldt?

Right off the bat, Boeldt fits into the mode of the dungeon scourer – he’s chosen the moniker “Adventure” for his musical forays. Continue Reading »

HENNING SCHMIEDT
Klavierraum
FLAU06
Flau 2008
15 Tracks.  61mins01secs

As his wife’s belly bloomed, pianist Henning Schmiedt similarly filled her room with chirruping meander-melodies that alternated with low-end frequencies like the earth’s crust fissuring and climaxing with seesawing hypno-patterns.

Schmiedt is an accomplished pianist, composer, and arranger, having studied music in Rostock, and having since scored works for several films and theatre productions. Continue Reading »

JUANA MOLINA
Un Día
WIGCD227
Domino Recording Co. 2008
08 Tracks. 50mins25secs

Juana Molina’s musical career is light years away from Juana Y Su Hermanas, an early nineties hit TV series in Latin America and Spain in which she held the main part and which made of her a household name in her native land. Since, Molina has taken a very different path, turned her back on popular stardom to reach a much more selective audience with delicate atmospheric pop/folk songs, tainted with occasional electronics and experimental brushes. With each of her four albums, released within a period of ten years, three of which on the excellent Domino imprint, she has continued to carved an utterly individual and personal niche for herself, and her latest offering, Un Día, sits almost perfectly in line with its predecessors. Continue Reading »

EIVIND OPSVIK
Overseas III
LLCD003
Loyal Label 2008
07 Tracks. 53mins08secs

With his first two albums as leader, Overseas, published on Fresh Sound New Talent in 2003, and its follow-up, Overseas II (FSNT, 2005), Norwegian-born jazz bassist Eivind Opsvik created a unique sonic universe which, although firmly set within contemporary jazz grounds, freely fed on rock, pop to ambient. Since, Opsvik has been involved in a variety of projects, of which perhaps the most prominent is his collaboration with guitarist Aaron Jennings, with whom he has released two albums to date.

Now returning with the full Overseas formation for a third slice of fine contemporary jazz like only Scandinavians musician can create. But, having lived in New York for ten years, Opsvik’s work is tainted with unique flavours. Continue Reading »

HAUSCHKA
Ferndorf
CD1308/LP1308/DA1308
Fat-Cat Records/130701 2008
12 Tracks. 46mins11secs

The project of German composer and pianist Volker Bertelmann, Hauschka provides a space for him to explore the piano in all its prepared glory and go beyond the boundaries of classical music, which still serves as the basis for his work. Indeed, Bertelmann spent over ten years studying classical piano before embarking on a much more challenging and experimental journey. As Hauschka, he combines his academic expertise with a playful approach, which has led him to place cork crown on the string of his piano, wrapping the hammers with aluminium paper or sticking rubber or felt between the strings to draw all sorts of unusual sounds from his instrument of predilection. Continue Reading »

NEAR THE PARENTHESIS
L’Eixample
CATMD159
n5MD 2008
09 Tracks. 53mins02secs

For his third album, San Francisco-based electronic musician Tim Amdt, who has been officiating under the strange pseudonym of Near The Parenthesis for a few years now, sought inspiration during a trip to Barcelona, and more particularly to the nineteenth century district of L’Eixample, renowned for its modernist architecture, including some of Gaudi’s best known buildings.

Having spent years in various formations through the years, Amdt finally established himself as a solo artist toward the beginning of the decade. His first album, Go Out And See, was published in 2006 on Canadian imprint Music Made By People, and was followed by an EP on Duotone that same year. Signed to n5MD shortly after, the second NTP album, Of Soft Construction, was released in 2007.

With L’Eixample, Amdt returns to the gentle atmospheric postcards that defined his previous outputs and expands on the already rich soundscapes and textures that served them. Continue Reading »

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Kubla Khan
TEXTURA001
Textura 2008
07 Tracks. 62mins02secs

Already a successful music magazine, Textura are now launching a new imprint, and releasing their first album. Kubla Khan takes its name from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic nineteenth century poem Kubla Khan, Or A Vision In A Dream, A Fragment, which was, according to Coleridge, inspire by an opium-induced dream. The poem also serves as a  thread to the seven tracks featured on the album, as each song takes a particular aspect of the poem and is built as a response to it, or an interpretation of it, by the respective artists. Continue Reading »

GOLDMUND
The Malady Of Elegance
TYPE039
Type Recordings 2008
15 Tracks.  55mins57secs

Keith Kenniff’s solo piano recordings show an unironic childlike wonder.  The Malady of Elegance, like Curduroy Road before it, is conservative in its tonal focus.  While its manner is reflective and studiedly neutral, the effect of these beautiful miniatures, performed with sublime delicacy, is oftentimes quietly haunting.

Pieces prove rather hypnotic in small doses.  Particularly during the first half of the recording, unfurling in an almost folk-like manner, tracks secrete tiny details at a meandering pace, fading in an out of earshot, and when they finally do well up and state their case, it’s a real event. Continue Reading »

FRIEDMAN & LIEBEZEIT
Secret Rhythms 3
25742/25751
Nonplace Records 2008
07 Tracks. 52mins40secs

Long before Kieran Hebden teamed up with legendary percussionist Steve Reid, German electronic musician Bernd ‘Burnt’ Friedman joined forces with another celebrated drummer in the person of Can member Jaki Liebezeit. Their first shared offering came in the shape of Secret Rhythms (2002), combined Friedman’s characteristic dub and futuristic electro jazz and Liebezeit’s feel for multi-faceted rhythmic formations to create a collection of subtle impressionist tracks caught somewhere between dusk and dark. Four years on, they were at it again. Secret Rhythms 2 continued to outline a fascinating world all in contrasts and undertones.

Third in the series, this latest Secret Rhythms collection redefines once more the spectrum in which the pair evolve. Continue Reading »

GALERIE STRATIQUE
Faux World
STATIK009
Statik Distribution 2008
15 Tracks. 46mins14secs

With his debut album, Nothing Down To Earth (Law & Auder, 2001) and its follow up, Horizzzons (Statik, 2003), Quebecer Charles-Emile Beullac created wonderful lush and evocative electronic soundtracks using a rhetoric close to that used by the likes of Boards Of Canada or Isan. His new offering is quite different. Primarily based on acoustic sound sources, ranging from flute, kalimba, xylophone and tablas to darbouka, udus, and tamboa, most of which were collected during a trip to Indonesia, the original recordings were made during a three-day jam session with friend and percussionist Raphaël Simard, with sole purpose to catalogue sounds rather than traditional use of these instruments. This is a process far removed from this album’s predecessor, which used almost no samples at all.

Faux World was inspired by the vague souvenir that Beullac retained of Indonesia as he fell victim of the side effects of the anti malaria tablets he took prior to the trip. Nightmares, irrational fears and a state of self-alienation pushed Beullac, who was travelling alone, to the brink of a serious breakdown. Continue Reading »