Testbild!
The Inexplicable Feeling Of September

An avant-garde band with a nod to pop?
Or a pop group with avant-garde pretensions?

Definitely an album that's easy to listen to, creating quite an atmosphere, where each track is a brushstroke of gray, but with always different shades.

I must admit that not knowing them at all, Swedes from Malmö not well known even in their homeland, I was irresistibly drawn to the title. A lot of rain noise on the CD, but warm rain, rain from a window not yet hermetically closed, allowing September thoughts to still be projected outward and not sadly bounce back inside an apartment like in November.

Hence, I believe, the "Inexplicable feeling" of the title. It is fundamentally a sweet guitar in electronic matrix, and as the tracks progress, one of the two components prevails over the other. Thus it transitions from Ben Watt-like atmospheres from "North Marine Drive" when the guitar takes center stage to dreamy Fennesz drones in "Venice".
The grayest clouds are on the horizon but have not yet arrived, so it cannot be said to be an oppressive album, there's still room for some hope of "warmth" as in "Clouds in transit" where the almost out-of-tune guitar paints a dreamy motif while, of course, it rains outside, to "Rain and air" which seems to have come from an eighties album but fits perfectly into the overall dynamic of the production.

The voice is almost always doubled, creating a nice, enveloping effect, in "Stettinergrand" it transforms into a brief chorus, until it disappears completely in "Meerschaum" where it is replaced by a keyboard. The last track "Sparks From Extinct Steelworks", as often happens, is a twenty-minute-long beast, making one somewhat regret the "vinyl" dimension, starting with a softly pleasant sung, always overlapping, and continuing with organized, not annoying noises and ending with sweet, non-essential electronic effects.

An album that will give you a bit of autumn during the summer heat, a damp moss carpet to replace the inflatable mattress.