musicAddicted

Sometimes I wonder whether electronics are some kind of an escape for classically trained musicians. If they try to express bit different ideas with a language very different from their usual, good ol’ piano or violin put too many constrains and traditional thinking in harmonies, progresses and melodic lines. Synthesizers, vocoders, processors and all the appliances that give an option to manipulate, modify and mutate come handy in such situation when an instrument is too bounding and too anticipated – especially when something extra-ordinary wants ti go out of soul.

Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm, label mates from German-based label Erased Tapes did something similar to the musings above. They met first in Berlin, later in Reykjavík to jam, to play, to experiment. What they finally evolved is an art of surprise and unexpected nature; Arnalds & Frahm picked analogue synthesizers with few quintessential synth effects and processed them through filters with some manipulations known only to them and a bunch of professionals.

Electronics are usually associated with cold, inhuman emotions, but the result of this collaborative effort is a completely opposite feeling: Stare (out on April 21st, Erased Tapes) is a soothing and highly touching piece of work. The sub-basses are warm, click-clack melodies are purely playful and all of this is poured in a slowly moving, whitely gleaming sonic liquid. It’s hard to say if the beeps in a1 should evoke glockenspiel or the tremours in a2 resemble a low-tuned xylophone; all of this is a nocturnal, yet lightly beaming mass of peacefully flowing hush.