EtherReal (FR)
While Denmark has offered us, for several years, very interesting artists in electronic and ambient post-rock, no artist from there had been, unless I am mistaken, welcomed by 12k until then. Discovered thanks to a cassette release, the duo MM Works completes the New York label’s view of continental European countries, and allows us to discover this group thanks to an album released in digital version only, and which intelligently mixes jazz and post-rock.
From the first vein, the Danes keep the freedom of play, the scattered strikes on the drums, the loose interventions of guitar or flute; from the second register, Mathias Lystbaek and Mads Lassen (the “MM” of their stage name referring to the initials of their first names) keep the general atmosphere and the capacity to integrate some electronic elements in the background. In a languid tempo, a title like “Day 01” wonderfully synthesizes these two sides, with a dreamy six-string that interacts with a drum kit played with brushes, in an overall climate conducive to wandering. The subject can, elsewhere, gain in relative darkness when the cymbals are struck and a guitar insists on its low notes (the title track).
If, beyond what has been noted, the motifs of MM Works evolve little from one track to another, during the forty minutes that this album lasts, it is perhaps necessary to consider it more as a whole, a block of seven tracks of homogeneous durations, delivering silky and hushed compositions.