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LP
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PI 231LP
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The combined forces of Frederik Valentin and Loke Rahbek first found a way into the world in 2017 with the album Buy Corals Online (EMEGO 247LP). Together they now present Elephant, an eight-track album that composes an inquisitive space with its parts. The economy of movement across Rahbek and Valentin's new collaborative album makes for a gentle transmission of its abstract intimacies. This presence, which appeared in glimpses on their previous work Buy Corals Online, is shaped by the delicate interplay between acoustic instrumentation and synthetically rendered sounds. Hauntingly melodic at times, the album feels like a suite of uncanny lullabies that grant access to realities that can only be found in dreams. Rahbek and Valentin are always leading you somewhere and showing you something-- one piece of the scene at a time, coming and going with different parts of a puzzle that eventually settles into a complete form. And through all this you perceive an inviting restlessness on their behalf, encouraging us to stray further and further into the private space of Elephant. Valentin is perhaps best known for his work in the exquisite atypical pop group Kyo, though his wide-reaching music and videography practices covertly underpin his flagship projects. Most recently, Valentin has been working with Yung Lean as both producer on his Nectar album (2019) as Jonatan Leandoer127 as well as on their commission for Sweden's Cullberg Ballet. As Croatian Amor, Rahbek has made similar forays into unworldly pop and his work with Christian Stadsgaard as Damien Dubrovnik has been as critical as their cofounding of Posh Isolation. Modest interventions from processed field-recordings and semi-erupting synths invite you to zoom in enough to hear the human hand. An attention to listening, to how sounds cradle the small movements and gestures that naturally accompany the playing of guitar, piano, and viola, is acutely developed by Rahbek and Valentin. It's in this way that Elephant persuades ou that even small stories unfurl into the most intricate and tremendous of sagas. "In Waves" features CTM.
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LP
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EMEGO 247LP
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First outing for this collaborative effort from the prolific Posh Isolation mainstay Loke Rahbek and Frederik Valentin of KYO, also on the revered Danish label. As old friends circling around the same scene, this is the first time they have combined their respective perspectives. The results are an ambitious aquatic infused audio environment. Recorded near water at Valentin's studio within the vicinity of the new aquarium in Copenhagen, Buy Corals Online channels the sensual floating aspects of such environments. "During Japan's Edo period (1615-1868) the phrase 'the floating world' (ukiyo) evoked an imagined universe of wit, stylishness, and extravagance -- with overtones of naughtiness, hedonism, and transgression. Implicit was a contrast to the humdrum of everyday obligation. The concept of the floating world began in the Japanese heartland, migrated eastward, and came to full flower in Edo (present-day Tokyo), where its main venues were popular Kabuki theaters and red-light districts." --Wikipedia Buy Corals Online arrives as a suite of works embracing the joy of being close to something you don't require interaction in order to experience. This enchanting aquatic infused audio hovers a sensual world rich in sensory experience. Loke Rahbek and Frederik Valentin's debut outing conjurer's a world both sensual and abstract as it moves casually alongside fantasy. Recorded 2016 & 2017, Copenhagen S, Natfabrikken. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, Germany 2017.
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