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Rating:
Finally, I managed to find the album after already seeing them live.
The cover takes me back to the farthest recesses of memory, evoking the English romantic painters Constable and Turner (I swear!), for the care and skill in the representation of light.
Then I check the booklet and discover that it’s actually a photograph, perhaps of the northern lights?
The album is very beautiful but not new. What does it remind me of? I thought about it for a long time, but the reference is disarmingly obvious: the 808 State from early English ambient around 1989.
For the use of "melodic" melodies they made, while Orbital and The Orb, during the same period, were increasingly pure and minimalist, one with a Kraftwerkian style and the other with dub influences.
Nothing new, then, but where does all the hype, the noise come from? Perhaps because not much is known about them (even after some research, I can't distinguish Svein from Torbjörn), maybe because they’re Norwegians from Tromsø and record in Bergen.
They are exotic.
But also because it's a beautiful album. "Eple" is great with those light and lopsided odd beats that don't resolve (pure and simple 808 State). The reinterpretation lies in the heavier bass and the more extensive use of vocals.
"Sparks" is reminiscent of Moby, with Anneli Drecker singing with reverberated and slightly distorted vocals, with "Play"’s vintage effect, a song with a nice mood.
Then there's "Poor Leno" with vocals by Erlend Øye, which live they sing alone through the vocoder, the most recognizable pop episode of the album, but also more unappealing.
"Remind Me" another pop-structured song, also sung by Erlend Øye, reminiscent of the synth-pop of the English band Beloved.
The rest is early ambient, beautiful, well-crafted with beautiful analog sounds (Roland 808 and 909) intertwined with digital ones, in delicate rhythms.
There's nothing else to say.
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