Artanker Convoy
Cozy Endings

Worth more than a thousand words is the old-fashioned candor of an image: the improbable rosy surface that envelops the expressive softness of the close-up detail, the composed and, one imagines, relaxed posture, seem to evoke the placid tenderness that could surprisingly reveal itself, in a meeting between walls dressed in slightly faded pastel tapestries, in a place that is familiar to us yet so foreign and estranging.

In the jumble of references to distant sources, in the atmospheric dilution that spans the sonic spectrum of the six tracks, the sextet Artanker Convoy unfolds perfectly balanced contributions of winds, guitars, drums, and percussion, sometimes accompanied by the peculiar sounds of vintage keyboards (think '70s, think certain proto fusion) freeing itself from any possible rigid genre definition. The album, conceived for a DVD containing nine videos, demonstrates, while listening envelops us in an immersive atmosphere, its plausibility even detached from the reference to images and paints for us scenarios rich in meticulous details. Where the overall fluidity of the flow veers, at times, into almost free restlessness or plunges into slightly unsettling and suspended nocturnal glimpses, only to express the unexpected happiness of the Minotaur (last track, "The Happy Minotaur") also thanks to the distortion of a guitar that has so far been often liquid and round.

They work in close relation with a collective of video artists named MUX, and this is their second album. Artanken is the leader's name, a drummer. You won't find intellectual pretensions, nor attempts at surprising solutions, while the quality and skill of the sounds and the pulsating sinuosity of the tracks are appreciated.

In the problematic search for a concise definition that, avoiding reference to a genre, aims to provide a general indication regarding the work in question, the image that began these lines comes to the rescue, preserving the sonic content. It is, undoubtedly, a cool album.