A WINTER TRANSMISSION :: Bersarin Quartett, Saffronkeira, Subheim

It’s winter again here in the Northern Hemisphere. Kitchen cabinets are filled with tea supply, favorite blankets are out and aired. The November batch of releases from Germany’s prolific multifaceted imprint, Denovali, consists of three albums highly suitable for the darkest shades of winter depths. Time to warm our bones beside the fire, and our hearts in front of the speakers.

Bersarin Quartett :: III

“Melancholy were the sounds on a winter’s night.” ― Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room. Soothing and lucid yet fierce, dangerous and intricate, Bersarin Quartett’s highly anticipated third album pulses with spellbinding cinematic splendor. It rises like a winter sun in the horizon, flows like the tramontane, crashes down like waves on rocks. Elegant modern classical maneuvers expertly woven with eccentric electronica and jazzy tendencies. Minimalist, precise, penetrating. Once again, Bersarin Quartett manages to preserve his unique signature sound and style without recycling himself. A work of great finesse that proves it’s quite possible to avoid the weak third album syndrome. In fact, it’s the Münster-based artist most crystallized and effective work to date.

Saffronkeira :: Synecdoche

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape—the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.” ― Andrew Wyeth. After joining forces with his fellow islander, trumpeter Mario Massa, for the creation of what would eventually be called Cause and Effect (Denovali, 2013), Sardinia’s peculiar sound designer Saffronkeira returns with his second collaborative effort. For Synecdoche, he invited Siavash Amini, Tympanik Audio’s Idlefon, Mia Zabelka and label mates Subheim, Witxes, Sebastian Plano and Field Rotation, to pour their distinctive spells into his idiosyncratic sound world. The results are ethereal, shamanic and powerful. Saffronkeira lets his co-conspirators perform their gymnastics freely inside his dark, micro glitchy constructions, allowing a beautiful ritualistic process of mutual intensification to blossom. Infused with tribal qualities, elements of modern classical, ambient and electronica, assemble a spacey, esoteric affair that takes hold of the listener slowly but surely.

Subheim :: Foray

“Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins.” ― Gustave Flaubert. With his debut album, Approach (Tympanik Audio, 2008), Greek-born, Berlin-based musician and graphic artist Subheim has garnered many praises from the media and public alike. The adventurous shift to a more organic, trip hop-infused, orchestral-oriented sound with his sophomore album, No Land Called Home (Ad Noiseam, 2010), was somewhat less well-received; however, gained him new fans and managed to satisfy many who were captured by the debut. Foray holds everything that was good about its two predecessors, only in a more minimalist, spacious way. Subheim has skilfully created a mystical noir-scented panoramic blend of downtempo electronica that occasionally sparkles with techno-ish characteristics. Ten seductive, emotionally-charged nocturnes. Highly recommended for fans of Asura, Miktek and AES Dana.