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QUI 016LP
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$28.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/24/2025
In a continued disruption to the airwaves following releases from Bondo and Monde UFO, Quindi returns to the Californian noise rock scene-not-scene to dig on the gnarled riffs of Expose. On their new release, the LA outfit double-down on a unique blend of bloated guitar fuzz and grimy analogue synths, and come out with a curiously cosmic kind of kick-ass. If there was a dreamy, sun-bleached quality to Bondo and Monde UFO, their label mates Expose sound more wrought from sweat-drenched jam sessions under halogen strip lights in grease-stained garages. But the guttural quality of their blown-out guitar tone is matched for vibrancy by the dexterity of their playing, bringing angular free jazz to post hardcore and sludge rock, capped off with the unearthly sonic possibilities of flamboyant synthesis. This dual-layered wall of sound lends extra weight to the likes of shit-kicking "Speed Dial," which thunders like a kosmische juggernaut with amped up leads and a dead-eyed vocal condensed into a visceral minute, all with enough time for a dramatic breakdown, synth eruption and a final thrust. Similarly scooped out of the trash compactor, "Description" rides for longer with one foot pressed firmly on the fuzz pedal, letting the electronics squeal around the punked-up rush of the guitars. But Expose are not a one-dimensional band constantly thrashing it out. By contrast, "The Constant" hits a crushing emotional note in its more structured push and pull between delicacy and heaviness, hitting bittersweet notes along the way throughout the peaks and troughs of the arrangement. "Self Terror" washes languid, discordant guitar strum into swirling FX accompanied by sax from Monde UFO's Ray Monde. Smart as a whip, sharp as a tack and boiling over with an untameable urgency, Expose make their presence felt in brilliant, bruising form on this particularly fierce addition to the Quindi catalogue.
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QUI 014LP
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Matching breezy, Bossa nova-tinged sophistication with softly spiralling psychedelia, Testbild! arrive in the Quindi lounge as though they've always been there. On their 12th album, Bed Stilt, the Swedish collective cast their attention back to the earlier days of their 25-year trip through sweetly mysterious pop-not-pop rendered in warm tones and shot through with surrealism. The project was spearheaded by Petter Herbertsson in his hometown of Malmö in the late '90s, although the story on their website credits the inspiration and source material to a chance meeting and unpublished manuscript from a retiring scientist. The collective's evolution since then is a tangled web of facts and fiction spun by a revolving cast of collaborators including Siri af Burén, Katja Ekman, Rikard Heberling, Douglas Holmquist, Mattias Nihlén, and Petter Samuelsson. Along the way, their music has touched on chamber pop, post-punk and modern jazz with the elaborate harmonies and catchy songwriting charm of the Canterbury scene. The tracks which make up Bed Stilt were in fact track recorded in Malmö back in the mid-'00s, lying in wait for the right opportunity to be brought to light with some delicate overdubs and finishing flourishes in the here and now. Tomas Bodén -- better known as Civilistjavel -- lent some additional synth work as well as mastering the record. Musically, Testbild! stay true to their idiosyncratic approach on Bed Stilt with six immaculately rendered sojourns through lilting harmonies and brushed rhythms, feeling nostalgic but beguiling in equal measure. The finger-picking delicacy and languid harmonica of "Streams" strike a pastoral mood neatly countered by the elegant slide into dislocated ambience for the track's final stretch. By contrast, "And Her Eyes Are Red" surges with a big beat urgency which plays beautifully with the mellow jazziness of the chord sequences, boldly toying with song structure to dart down curious tangents without losing the immediate impulse of a great pop record. Somewhere in this tension between clarity and chaos we can understand the addictive charm of Testbild! -- a band steeped in the considerable craft of making accomplished and unconventional music so very easy to sink into.
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QUI 015LP
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Turning their gaze to the buoyant culture of wyrd, modernist German folk music, Quindi welcome a spectacularly idiosyncratic offering from Johannes Schebler, aka Baldruin. Bewildering narrative twists, high drama and intricate delicacy make Mosaike der Imagination an engrossing listen from the outset, as baroque atmospheres and tumbledown drums intertwine with tactile string plucks and needlepoint synthesis in an authoritative bridging of ancient and hypermodern sonic sensibilities. Schebler's catalogue as Baldruin is extensive, reaching back to the late '00s and covering a lot of ground through cassette albums on respected underground labels like SicSic, A Giant Fern, and Lullabies For Insomniacs. Meanwhile, his work has been recognized as part of a broader movement of experimental electronic music in Germany taking inspiration from folk traditions, as documented on Gespensterland. Beyond his solo work, Schebler also works with Jani Hirvonen as Grykë Pyje (mappa), and both collaborate with Paul Wilson as Yayoba (Not Not Fun). Christian Schoppik of leading dark folk project Brannten Schnüre joins him as Freundliche Kreisel (STROOM). It's a tangled, fascinating and evocative sound world which Mosaike der Imagination offers a compelling window into. No two tracks on the album follow the same pattern or palette, whether gliding through the Giallo synth undulations and post rock tonal arcs of "Stimme des Wegelagerers" or spelling out miasmic incantations through flickering flames on "Aus dem Feuer, aus dem Licht." "Hinein, hinaus, hinüber" revolves around meditative drum mantras and cascading melodic phrasing, densely layered and evolving with purpose. "Gemeinsam hindurch" flicks between swooping strings and pizzicato plucks in a purely romantic expression of orchestration, "Mit verbundenen Augen" is a bewildering choral voice study and "Im Sternstrom" revels in ecstatic synth arpeggios. Nothing can be predicted except the vibrancy and clarity of Schebler's vision. It's a vision which extends to the front cover artwork for Mosaike der Imagination -- a glorious tapestry created by Finnish artist Jan Anderzén, with a responding design and layout from Schebler adorning the rear sleeve.
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QUI 013LP
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After having finished recordings for Desde Infiernos De Flores, Nový Svět immediately began putting down new songs for a follow-up album, which they planned to finalize benefitting from time won by releasing Desde Infiernos De Flores in slices over a period of some months. J. Weber's and Frl. Tost's return to an earlier life in their hometown Vienna brought a new deck of cards into play and those by then already mixed new pieces, rumored to circle around all things dream and sleep and (waking up in) nightmares, suddenly were regarded as "too Spanish," hence "inappropriate" for release. Instead, in late 2007 surprisingly a synth-only album named Todas Las Últimas Cosas ("All the last things"), accompanied by a collection of early demos entitled Todas Las Primeras Cosas, was announced by the acclaimed German label Treue Um Treue/Reue Um Reue. During the following seven years it took Nový Svět to present their next album Mono, tons of unreleased music was made available on various formats. But none of the tracks abandoned in 2007 showed up. Years after their making those recordings were saved from a disintegrating master and compiled for the album DeGenerazione, which when it showed up online caught the attention of Quindi Records, now making the album available for the first time on the intended LP format, presenting a missing link in the Austrians' discography and the final part of a musical triptych, the so-called Spanish Trilogy, begun with Fin.Finito.Infinito back in Vienna, where it now would also find an end. Although noisy and rhythmic in parts, DeGenerazione closes the passage of Nový Svět's exile on an overall introspective note. It stands as a document of a band at the point of implosion, another dark hole -- in a story full of them - illuminated and evidence that J. Weber's Spanish did not improve a bit. Not even living there. A triumph of the will.
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QUI 011LP
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Three years on from the desolate beauty of their debut, Quindi Records presents the second album from Dead Bandit. The ghosts of their past endeavors still haunt their guitars, but on Memory Thirteen the duo's delicately disheveled Southern gothic feels tonally distinct from their prior outing. Dead Bandit is Ellis Swan and James Schimpl -- the former a noted solo singer-songwriter from Chicago with a penchant for eerie, witching hour murder ballads and the latter an accomplished Canadian multi-instrumentalist with a bias towards heartworn, roaming soundscapes. Their instrumental collaboration has an open, lyrical quality which says as much as any spoken line, and on this album they've especially embraced the power of contrast as the listener is guided between scenes, sometimes within the confines of one track. "Peel Me An Orange" is especially instructive in this regard, beginning as a blown-out paean to sonic degradation and the acute sense of hopelessness it projects, only to yield to a lilting tape loop of twanging guitar before entirely widening out in an emphatic burst of post-rock optimism. Post-rock isn't noted for its banal cheeriness as a genre, and Dead Bandit aren't about to lay down feel-good drive-time anthems, but the sense of pulling at extremes of energy and introspection show Swan and Schimpl to be testing the emotional limits of their weatherbeaten sound. The cautiously sentimental mood of "Blowing Kisses" hints at the hard-won light which can be encountered while pointedly driving into darkness. Sometimes noise is a subtle device -- a looming bed of unease under the forthright pluck of Swan's distinct guitar tone or the cracking round the edges of a beaten-up drum machine. On "Memory Thirteen" the distortion on the bass becomes a central figure in its haggard waltz, while "Staircase" and "Perfume" leave the signal wet until the delay feedback becomes the body of the riff. Either way, the sound is never left untouched as Swan and Schimpl grow more comfortable in their exchange, blurring their respective sonic languages as they expand their shared vocabulary to create an album of depth, difference and devoted distortion.
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QUI 010LP
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With its tenth record from Fortunato Durutti Marinetti, Quindi continues to celebrate songwriting and storytelling framed by curious musicality. In the case of Toronto-based Daniel Colussi, the man behind Eight Waves In Search Of An Ocean, his melancholic poetry cuts through with a clarity which calls to mind all-time greats from Annette Peacock through to Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen. On each record, Colussi has found distinct arrangements of players to set the mood, ranging from gently lilting art and folk rock through to orchestrated balladry, but Eight Waves In Search Of An Ocean widens the palette of Fortunato Durutti Marinetti to create an album in which each song feels like a tale unto itself. The addition of drum machines and synths to the musical palette bring with them the strong connotations of pop while the sax and violin sounds similarly smooth and silky, and one can't help but think of John Martyn's slide into the digital sound of Sapphire or Kraftwerk's bittersweet synthetic tenderness. Colussi remains the central focus whatever happens around him, in possession of the kind of unforced charisma which drives a song deep into the listener's heart. It's at once entirely his own style and yet comforting and familiar. The lyrics might sweep you into the singer's inner world, similarly to the experience listening to late '60s Tim Buckley. The artist himself dubs his musical expression as "poetic jazz rock" with a sideways glance -- it's not exactly poetry, far from trad jazz and it doesn't really rock, yet the tag feels uncannily like it fits, just like the curious music it's used to describe.
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QUI 009LP
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At once a spiritually-charged journey and a shit-kicking party record, American Cream Band comes to Quindi covering all the bases. American Cream Band was formed by Twin-Cities musician Nathan Nelson, taking the form of improvised live shows and albums Frankensteined from these sessions into exultant, fully-formed records. The band's previous records have manifested on labels like Moon Glyph and Medium Sound, and now Presents arrives in a freewheeling flash of snappy new wave, skronky sax, call and response sass and some krautrock-minded sonic cosmology. The album came together in December 2021, when Nelson took ten musicians to legendary studio Pachyderm in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. Living together, they laid down some drum-heavy sessions that became the building blocks of the record. "Taste What We Taste" is the perfect example of an exuberant groove pounded on skins as a vessel for a joyous get-down, with the singers and players free to freak out on top. Nelson remains at the center of the melee, throwing half-sardonic, half-heartfelt calls out for connection. "Banana" celebrates nonsense and holds down the most serious of beats -- a disco-not-disco deadeye dripping in late night sleaze and lysergic potential. On "Royal Tears," the jagged guitar chops call back to Gang Of Four, while the hot n' heavy sax from Cole Pulice baits James Chance and all the other angular New York un-jazz misfits. Amongst his other implied intentions for the recordings, Nelson wanted to channel opposites, not least the distinct male-female energies in his vocal sparring with the girls on assistance duties. It wouldn't be right to call them backing singers as they shoot back at his punchy mantras, bringing a certain fierce femininity that tips its hat to The B-52s' Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson, not to mention iconic post-punk bands like Au Pairs, Delta 5 and Bush Tetras. There's space for the dreamier kosmische which has crept into the American Cream oeuvre in the past, as "Sirens" opens the album up in a swirling pond of rag tag percussion and molten synths. "Words Would Handcuff Us" cools the whole riotous assembly down in unmoored perfection, a strung-out Bossa nova seance dusted with celestial drips from analogue spaceships. Equally treading the line between light and dark, conscious and unconscious, the sacred and profane, Presents is a life-affirming, creep-under-the-skin listening experience -- a joyously transient chapter in the evolution of American Cream Band.
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QUI 008LP
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Heralding 2023 from way out west, Monde UFO land on Quindi with a distinctive album of dream pop vignettes and outer rim punk exotica. Hailing from the same Californian heat haze as recent Quindi signings Bondo, Monde UFO have manifested in the past four years through a series of DIY releases including their 2021 album 7171 and last year's set of Fugazi covers, 4 Songs. The loose fit project centers around the singing, playing and songwriting of Ray Monde and Kris Chau and features Kern Haug on drums. The resulting sound arrives as a resourceful analog of plush '60s pop captured through the modest means of a truly independent musical endeavor. The sound rendered on Vandalized Statue touches on dubby atmospherics, the lilting breeze of bossa nova and the introverted muse of US indie rock, but the end result is a natural, cohesive whole centered around the songwriting. Imagine the girl from Ipanema sat toking in a comfortable spot in the corner of the dive bar while someone weaves her a tall tale or two, and you might be somewhere in the right direction. The stories in the lyrics unfurl as meandering narratives taking you through everyday exchanges and far-fetched, cosmic scenarios alike. At every turn the cozy musicality gives everything a relatable, homespun charm, even as the mixing desk becomes a mess and the lo-fi FX crash into each other. The album will be fronted by three singles which reflect the wide reach of Monde UFO's sound. "Visions of Fatima" is one of the more melancholic pieces on the album, fronted by laconic organ and centering on cracked vocals with an off-key charm that indirectly evokes Jeffrey Lee Pierce. "Government Employee" is a sun-kissed trip of low-key lounge surrealism, bizarro storytelling and shuffling exotica splendor which broadly defines the woozy mood of Vandalized Statue. "Garden Of Agony" is a more delicate but no less dreamy piece matching electric tremolo with acoustic fingerpicking balladry which hides its considerable depths behind a seemingly simple arrangement. At once intimate and projected into the cosmos, Monde UFO add to the particular path Quindi is taking through hidden corners of independent music with a romantic, restless spirit.
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QUI 007LP
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Bondo is four Los Angeles musicians collaging displaced tempos and fractured melodies. Their sparsely vocalized music conspires to bring into view a practical enlightenment, evoking the sandy contentment of an exhausted marine sunset. The organically mechanical compositions wander with the intention not to be aimless, but to be consumed in process. Bondo comes to Quindi Records to release its first full-length album, Print Selections, and it is saturated in the communal consciousness of the band. The songs call for the individuals to dissolve to make way for the music. The lyrical content of the record tells of a mind made anew, cleared of its data and ego to witness nothing in particular. Bringing the past with them, the band makes clear allusions to their influences -- their tones reminiscent of outfits like Duster, Unwound, Acetone, and Fugazi, but also has heavy nods to more formless genres like the dub melodies of King Tubby and the jazz of Archie Shepp. The music feels like the dusty bed of a scanner, plays like the light leaking from underneath its lid. Includes postcard and download code.
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QUI 006LP
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Drawing the night in around his private, unnerving vigil, Ellis Swan returns to Quindi Records with an album of cracked beauty and haunted balladry. The Chicago-based singer-songwriter debuted on the label last year with a collaborative project called Dead Bandit, a vividly produced instrumental set in thrall to the badlands and a laconic, languid Americana. Under his own name, Swan records intimate, poetic songs in a stark fashion, so fragile they might disintegrate in between your fingers were you to pick them up. He draws the microphone close to pick up every whisper and drags the music through layer upon layer of tape fuzz, leaving room for atmospheric impressions which loom out of the walls like the ghosts of past misdeeds. These pieces play on the natural distortion and delirium which occurs at the farthest end of the night -- the hour before dawn might hope to break the veil of darkness. Swan's is a hauntological sound, but like the late Israeli rockabilly icon Charlie Megira his process strikes a spooked tone past revivalism and out of time or place. The only anchor which places Swan anywhere is the subtle presence of Katherine Swan providing lyrics to "3am" and lyrics and backing vocals to "It Could Be Worse". The impression cast is of one man and his guitar, but there are other textures tucked into the music -- the muffled murmur of a drum machine or a low frequency organ hum, some desolate piano, other treated percussive impulses which might well have been the work of incidental sprites while the four-track was rolling. There are fuller cuts like "Evening Sun" and the title track "3am" which play with structural dynamics and creep out of the shadows a touch, while passages of plaintive, instrumental unease such as the hypnotic, mantra-like "Chinatown" protract the space between songs. "Swing" lolls between moments of bottomless silence and a discernible, rickety funk, and "Puppeteers Tears" teases out a buried drama. But primarily, it's the light touch of "Horses Bones" and tin can tenderness of "She's My Sweet Summer Storm" which spell out the spellbinding character of 3am; a singular creation fusing the best qualities of folk, blues and Americana with a fearlessly experimental sound palette.
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QUI 005LP
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2023 repress. After their celestial Arcturian Corridor opened proceedings on Quindi, London-based brothers Clive and Mark Ives are back with a new record. When Woo first began recording at home in the early '70s, Clive and Mark were the embodiment of furtive genius. Since re-emerging in 2013, they've released scores of albums, collaborated with Seahawks, and have now struck up a productive relationship with Quindi. On Paradise In Pimlico, you're hearing a very different sound to the one gently creaked out on early classics like Into The Heart Of Love (1990). This is fulsome, contemporary production rich in detail and artful sound design, but crucially, Clive and Mark's gorgeously melodic approach remains open and inquisitive, even with the sheen and shimmer of modern studio techniques. Woo sound more confident than ever in their composition, too. The crystalline, fragile tones of "Cadenza D'Innocenza" glide through key changes that spell out an engrossing narrative, while the cascading melodies on "Moment To Moment" pirouette across the space between notes with masterful poise. "Paradise In Pimlico" is an illustrious suite of orchestral composition played out with the lightest touch, framed by the slightest of synthesized fauna and topped off with tender sax and flute. Album closer "In Case Love Fails" takes on a subtly cinematic urgency with its undercurrents of walking bass and the strike of the string section (synthetic or otherwise). There's space for markedly new approaches, too. The rhythm section on "The Motorik Mirror" clunks and pops with a tactile, high-definition quality which teeters between electronic sculpture and clockwork, organic machination. The deft, lightly-brushed drums coursing through "Even More Notes" see Clive and Mark step into a different mood, celebrating the beat as another fluid, tonally-rich texture in the mix and adding a smoky, jazzy hue to the Woo repertoire. It's far from a drum-focused exercise though. At every turn, you're confronted with aching beauty and timbral surprises. If there's one constant throughout Paradise In Pimlico, it's the omnipresent chimes. These twinkling drops of light scattered throughout are something of a hallmark of Woo, ensuring the lilting, lullaby-like magic of their music persists whichever direction they head in. Includes download code.
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QUI 003LP
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Quindi Records continues to yield intriguing prospects as the label reach the third edition, moving from Woo's astral ruminations via Cabaret Du Ciel's sonorous meditations on to the dusty, dusky mantras of Dead Bandit. Maintaining the ambiguous creative practices of the label's previous releases, From The Basement reaches to the Earth for the malleable grit of post-rock while making the most of the broader sonic outlooks afforded by kosmische and electronic effects processes. Dead Bandit are Chicagoan songwriter Ellis Swan and Canadian multi-instrumentalist James Schimpl. Swan has previously released solo works including the stunning, inward-looking album I'll Be Around, a lo-fi Southern gothic dragging the husk of country ballads through battered signal chains. In Dead Bandit, Swan and Schimpl's artistic vision casts its gaze outwards on a vast expanse, where the distortion has space to stretch its legs and the drums pound out into open space. There's a common tonality at work here, the duos guitars telling a thousand hard-bitten tales where Swan's voice falls silent. It's no surprise to learn Swan and Schimpl's reference points include Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack, SF noise rockers Chrome and the imperial work of the late, great Mark Sandman of Morphine. You can sense Jim Jarmusch's America just lingering behind the road-weary thrum of "These Clouds" and detect the shadow of Tom Waits lurking in the raunchy lurch of "FF M". The pointedly titled "Sedated" calls to mind the slow-core movement and its rejection of rock n' roll's fixation on speed. Instead, tonality and atmosphere are key across From The Basement, although the ambient lull of "I See Her There" is the exception rather than the rule. Dead Bandit's desert sound has vibrancy and immediacy to match its moodiness, from the sultry swagger of opening track "Mud" to the bold and borderline bombastic "When I Looked Around". Like the previous Quindi releases, this record is inherently experimental in nature, but not at the expense of its warmth and instant appeal. From The Basement, an inquisitive pair with primitive tools look out and imagine a colossal plain as the canvas on which to paint their picture Includes download code and special insert drawing.
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QUI 002LP
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Following the stellar trip through Woo's Arcturian Corridor (2020), Quindi Records continues to explore intimate, inviting sounds with an experimental bent by facilitating the return of overlooked Italian duo, Cabaret du Ciel. Initially formed in 1986, Cabaret du Ciel's debut album Skies In The Mirror was a low-key and extremely rare cassette release of spellbinding electro-acoustic ambient music created by Gian Luigi Morosin and Andrea Desiderà. A reissue on Hybride Sentimento in 2018 brought renewed attention to the startling music contained within this unique project. The Breath Of Infinity is an album comprised of new works recorded over the past year, either as new pieces or reworked from old ideas with the assistance of Giorgio Ricci. Morosin and Desiderà's natural instincts as multi-instrumentalists shine through across the record as they did on Skies In The Mirror, although these tracks were in fact composed as raw live takes using electronic workstations (with a little additional fretless bass provided by a close friend Giampaolo Diacci on "Different Suns" and "Climatic Variations"). There is a crisp, digital timbre to the worlds Cabaret du Ciel shape out on The Breath Of Infinity -- utopian pastures with an air of optimism similarly expressed in the first waves of ambient electronica. Folk traditions exert a guiding influence on the sparkling, ethereal melodies, and full-frequency harmonization, but this is music enamored with timeless plateaus rather than hackneyed interpretations of the past, present or future. It's also an album of variety. "Different Suns" tumbles with a pastoral, elemental earthiness thanks to the interwoven rhythmic murmuring of percussion and live bass, while "Lakota" pivots in sharply rendered bio-mechanical formations. There's a widescreen bombast to "Theatre Azure" which calls to mind mid-90s US electronica, while "Meredith" reclines in a blissful bath of plush '80s FM synthesis. "Sunset Parade March" has a distinct sense of propulsion thanks to its overdriven, broken techno rhythm and "Highlands" skips with an infectious energy despite not using any formal kind of percussion, but even in these more kinetic moments a preference for mellow musicality maintains the dreamlike mood. Consider The Breath Of Infinity like an archipelago, where each track functions as its own distinct island of ideas while being intrinsically interconnected to the others. In a similar fashion to acts such as Ultramarine, Cabaret du Ciel emphasize the musicality in their electronic music, shaping out an evocative, imaginative environment to idly glide through or attentively explore.
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