FRAET
For Another Day
BEN547
Benbecula Records 2009
07 Tracks. 38mins34secs

For Another Day sees Tokyo-based electronic artist Fraet – who now and again also operates as Fjordne – relax into a selection of enchantingly faint techno pads that ping outward like splash rings in a pool of fresh melodic color.  In turning simple electronic tones and elastic percussion into slippery grooves, Fraet is decidedly unfussy, allowing them to carry on insistently, become entangled with competing patterns, and finally be taken asunder by the rich and luminous lumpen melancholy of the underwater ambience, which, gaining as it does in opulence near the end of the effort – provide some intimacy and perspective on the proceedings as a whole. In so doing, the manner of the works progression is full of event and yet to achieve this it never leaps through structural hurdles and trapdoors.  Rather, Fraet metamorphosizes a unity, calmly and subtly bringing out internal explorations in a limited, linear form.

As the work favors loose-limbed, melodic manoeuvres, it would be easy to overlook the thoughtfulness of his graceful sense of space and line.  The work is not fraught with surprise, but then neither is it forced or formulaic.  In fact, though it makes few demands, it rewards close attention.  One such composition, Did You See It ascends with a steady rhythmic pulse, and yet it also bristles with the subtle influence of Fraet’s harmonic imagination.   First and foremost, then, this is an album of a deceptively rich array of gestures.

3.5/5

Fraet (MySpace) | Benbecula Records