HOME

REVIEWS

SoundsXP Presents

Next show:

BAD FRIDAY!
Peluché,
Dead Coast,
Les Sueques,
Calva Louise,
Flights of Helios,
Videocean,
Dirty Blondes
+ SoundsXP DJs

The Windmill, Brixton
Good Friday, 14th April 2017
3pm till late

Buy tickets here

On Our iPod

Latest Forum Posts

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Album Review

Bersarin Quartett
II Denovali

Article written by Michael H - May 17, 2012

'II' is ambient in the sense that it doesn’t demand attention but it certainly rewards it. The album is alive with detail and a beautiful sorrow. ‘Zum Greifen Nah’ is made up of shivering strings, a squelching beat, crashing waves and guitar taps. Elsewhere, synth drones and an electronic choir evoke a feeling of ceremony, like accidentally walking into a funeral.

Much of the album’s songs introduce an initial simplicity that hides a subtle complexity; ‘Einsame Wandeln Still Im Sternensaal’ employs a simple melody of John Barry strings and woodwind until a martial rhythm breaks out, revealing the clockwork springs and steam hiss within; like the smooth surface of a pond concealing abundant animal life beneath. ‘Im Glanze Der Komeben’ sounds fogged, half-remembered and obscured until a chain-driven machine beat provides some clarity.

The underlying sadness of the album reveals itself best in the brilliant ‘Alles Ist Ein Wander’ in which a deep GAS-like drone builds to an echoing white light climax before fading back to black, and in the way the album’s final piece eventually faints into a windblown swooning drum beat.

Although Bersarin Quartett is actually a solo project, Thomas Bücker has the imagination of a whole group. With this release he has created an album of contrasts; light and shade, acoustic and electronic, stasis and action, large-scale and intimate, sweeping gestures and opaque silence. The album progresses within a tidal mesh of sounds, at times distant and unhurried, at others, enveloping and urgent. He seems to have a total command of his material; everything seems deliberate and considered but not contrived. Every sound is in its right place but exists as part of a homogenous whole.

Links:
http://denovali.com/bersarinquartett/
http://www.myspace.com/bersarinquartett