Although the twentieth production Raabenstein has been involved in, All These Precious is only his second strictly solo album. It ventures a rich, engrossing and meticulously constructed density, steady-handedly and with great artistry, which becomes increasingly and impressively apparent each time you replay it.
Me Raabenstein is an accomplished visual artist with a few short films in the eighties to his credit as well who proclaims an interest in “overlapping structures and the lamination of inappropriate ingredients.” He characterizes his musical style as “broken” but “lascivious.” It’s a canny aesthetic delivered in a deceptively laid back manner on his new album All These Precious. It’s hybrid music—a kind of re-thought jazz uneasily athwart incorrigibly unruly rhythms.
Although the twentieth production Raabenstein has been involved in, All These Precious is only his second strictly solo album. It ventures a rich, engrossing and meticulously constructed density, steady-handedly and with great artistry, which becomes increasingly and impressively apparent each time you replay it.
Bristling like a rash, “Gentle Little Burden” has a whiff of decadence and shameful longings. The “Psycho” strings of “Cold Stick” is a Hitchcockian theme for a twenty-first century thriller. The luxurious falling feeling of “Beggar’s Palace” plummets past sinewy branching beats without snapping a single twig. “Mum Lump” has the wisp of a woman’s voice threading through its architecture, but there is also a tiny little muezzin hidden in its structure.
Each of Raabenstein’s tracks are relatively brief—three to five minutes—but are so dappled, bedaubed and freckled, that they really seem much longer. “Jabbering and Jam” has been stuck with the most incongruous title, since it is the closest thing to winding down for a moment in the chill room, and the following track, “Forgetting Tricks and Play,” is breezy as southern Californian AM radio coming in on the shortwave somewhere in Eastern Europe. “Dix” is dark and enigmatic, something ghoulish out of a B-movie that makes you turn your head away from the screen, and “Buttered Rolls” only smoothens out with a few orchestral sighs as it trundles to a close. “Tank” is scrupulously restrained, tightly wound-up funk tangled in the crosstown traffic of keening strings.
It’s obvious Raabenstein has a highly developed visual imagination, one which he translates brilliantly into audio. The dimpled spindle upon which his melodies revolve wrap you around the album’s little finger.
All These Precious is available on nonine. Buy at nonine, iTunes, Beatport.
