September 09, 2004

Oktober Im Park

Since this seems to be the season of dire warnings, I think it is important to tell you that your fall (or your spring, you readers in the Southern Hemisphere) will be woefully incomplete if you do not swiftly procure yourself a copy of März's Wir Sind Hier, available October 25 from Karaoke Kalk.

März – the duo of Ekkehard Ehlers and Albrecht Kunze – make sample pop (or at least I think it’s largely sampled – the opening track on their album Love Streams is based principally around Nick Drake’s “From the Morning”) that’s flush with acoustic instruments and glowing, filigreed drones, and overlaid with someone’s – Kunze’s? – husky, whisperish vocals. It’s one of those rare albums that almost completely outstrips my ability to say anything intelligent about it, perhaps because its sense of pathos – a simultaneous rush of melancholy and promise – is so overwhelming. I suppose, given the acoustic instrumentation, many critics will rush to connect it to the “folktronica” of Four Tet et al, but forget all that. Forget everything when you listen to this album; just indulge in your most Romantic, sublime, teenagerish reveries of unrequited love and eternal life, and remember when an autumn wind or spring breeze filled you with a kind of joyful sadness you still haven’t found a name for. Seasons pass and unabashed adolescent emotions dull, but this is a record you could live in – bright-eyed, bristle-necked, and agog – forever.

(For a taster, you may download "The River" and "Blaue Fäden" from the group’s own site.)

Posted by philip at September 9, 2004 05:25 PM
Comments

fix those links!

Posted by: Matos W.K. at September 9, 2004 10:45 PM

"the river" & "blaue fäden". that should fix it...

Posted by: bill brown at September 10, 2004 04:04 AM

Wow, what a pleasant surprise! I like the complete 180 from Ehlers' austere proper solo material.

Posted by: Matthew at September 10, 2004 08:30 AM

Ehlers is Our Jean Cocteau.

May this be stamped on many the receding hairline of a sober music journalist - sorry, 'writer', since they all aspire, to Art & that.

American Football's self titled record (Polyvinyl) sums up blurry adolescence best for me - that period of lost&found, when you look to sound for all those things that never happen. And one day you find them on magnetic tape, recorded, in a room far away, passed from mixtape to mixtape, till eventually here they are, in your room, all those things that never happened, in all directions, spreading. Unbound.

That record is so dreamy it comes at you in wisps.

Posted by: anil at September 10, 2004 11:56 AM

Check out the recent mix posted to the schaffell thread on ILM. Its fun if not as techno orientated as yours was.

Posted by: hector at September 10, 2004 12:07 PM

yes, i cannot wait to hear this! "everybody had a good year" from the first maerz album is one of my favorite songs ever. i also think this work connects very closely with a lot of ehlers' other material. fuzzy logic & fuzzy memories.

Posted by: tricky disco at September 12, 2004 06:39 PM

very pretty - not folktronic by any stretch, as one's tronic-ness is minimal at best, and the other sounds adjacent to the romantic-house pop from the land of Tamborello and Audio Dregs. Fits nicely... Thanks

Posted by: Raspberry at September 14, 2004 05:53 PM

Hi. This is my links.

Posted by: nik at June 20, 2005 09:36 PM
Post a comment









Remember personal info?