Swooping strings, a breathy female voice and some minimal percussion usher in the first track. It reminds me slightly of the kind of production on the 2nd LP by Nick Drake. It has that folksy, early ‘70s feel to it. The song’s over before you get the chance to fall in love with it as much as you might like to. Track 2 is more of the same, this time with a kind of mystical Eastern feel. Like the kind of music you might hear as someone’s performing the Indian rope trick. The vocalist is now singing about returning to New York in December and, again, the track is over before you get a chance to say ‘Fuck me, that was rather good, actually’. Track 3 has a Portishead kind of thing going on, if anyone remembers who they were. In fact, most of these 11 tracks do. They mostly all have that crackly ‘vinyl’ sound in the background. This CD sounds like it was recorded on a computer using Pro-Tools (I don’t actually know if that is the case, it just SOUNDS like it, to these ears). It would help to have some info on the musicians involved and song titles, etc, but the note I got with it says ‘We haven’t made up titles for the songs yet’, which is a shame because they all tend to blend into one after a while. That’s in no way a criticism, because this CD is very enjoyable listening and I’ll be giving it quite a few spins. I DO know that is has something to do with Nanook of the North (a CD which is reviewed elsewhere on this site), but this one has the same person providing the vocals throughout which gives it a nice consistent feeling. This actually sounds like the kind of thing which could be quite successful if it was released and promoted properly. It’s all very professionally done and sounds tasteful and heartfelt enough to appeal across the board to fans of all different genres of music. Very nice.
PS- Here is an email I received from Mattias, who was involved in this CD after I sent him the above review
Hi mark,
Thank you for your kind comments...this is the first review ever. We are very very happy !!!!!
Some small details...though.
All the music is played on three instruments Optigan, Orchestron and Mellotron. None of the instruments are treated in protools or in computers...they actually sound like that. The vinyl crackles on the loops are from scratches on the optical discs that contain the sound...for more info info plaese check out the most informative site www.optigan.com
All instruments are from the 60´s and early 70´s. The Optigan provides all the rythms and loops and the Mellotron and Orchestron provides the main melody lines with string sounds, vibraphones et.c et.c
So the band is just two people
Anna Karin von Malmborg - Vocals
Mattias Olsson - Optigan, Orchestron and Mellotron.
Thank you thank you thank you !
// Mattias