There are bands that you mostly hear about when other bands talk influences. Obscure electronica/ambient pioneers :zoviet*france:, is to me such a band; I’ve hardly heard anything by them, but I’ve heard a lot about them. So it was rather exiting to get my hands on the new CD by Penumbra, one half of :zoviet*france:. Skandinavien is somewhat of a concept album, where several of the sounds are taken from travels Penumbra has made on the Scandinavian peninsula. It’s semi-ambient music of the old school, with loads of analogue-synthy sounds. It is of course silly to compare the follower with the original, but lots of what Pete Namlook released on FAX during the early nineties has the same focus on repetetive, almost dub-like analogue sounds and sweeping backgrounds. But Skandinavien feels more thought through and solid than most of the whole FAX catalogue. At times totally ambient, at times so repetetive it can be called techno, but always in a soundscape 180 degrees from anything else in electronic music today. It impresses me when artists continue to make good music in their own style without it having that retro feel.
