Attainable childhood and adult fantasies and a few good scares. Comes in a stern, minimalist black and white package.
Soun Records is the little Slovakian label that could, a small but shiny locomotive pulling a string of lateral-thinking pop electronic musicians (both foreign and domestic) out of a quiet corner of central Europe all the way to the Grand Central Station of attention. Sharing more a sensibility than a particular style, they play jack-in-the-box music. It winds up and you never know what will pop out next. Accessible darkwave, friendly beats, silken ambient, cold comfort for warm-hearted lovers.
To open Soun Compilation 01, Somfay tuff-tuffs “Tesla” through a coily, bouncy black and white landscape. IIII follows Irma, with whom he created the label’s outstanding debut release. Irma delivers a torch song with controlled fervency; IIII expresses his own small sadnesses with a piano melody worried by gusts of steam and toothpick glitch. Axel Helios provides credence to the present reviewer’s train metaphor with “The 29 is Always Late,” careering erratically down a track that it is in danger of leaving.
Weldroid’s “Welcome Slicer” is chunky, cuckoo-clock jungle with a dramatic leitmotif running amock among its gears. Commencing with an ominous cello flourish rumbling below detourned chatter, Mitoma’s “Antecrypt Ruins” is a small, malfunctioning symphony. Tokyo minimalist UNKNOWNjp soothes the soul with elegiac, looped ambience aptly named “Night Flight,” ultimately disappearing into the pale flash of distant fireworks.
The smartly arranged track order brings Irma back with a Nóva remix of her song, while Jesse Somfay returns with amphetamine calypso. Eigenheimer’s brief, ethereal melodrama is followed by a longer, more gothic mystery play hammered out by Odd Shapes. Thereafter follows a small stream of sunny pop tunes, before Tom Roberts’ “Convergence U32” cruises shiny, skyscrapered business districts, only to drop his passenger off at the seamy back alley leather club that is Frietboter’s “Briekboot” and frog marched back out again by Odailbe’s “Anaasazi,” all the way to the spooky forest on the outskirts of town. For the grand finale, Weldroid remixes IIII in grandiose fashion.
Attainable childhood and adult fantasies and a few good scares. Comes in a stern, minimalist black and white package.
Compilation 1 is available on Soun. [Bandcamp]
