ANGELswing - To Blanket Ourselves download mp3 flac

Recently Dark Winter released a new album of ANGELswing. This artist is a familiar name on this label and it's already his fourth album here. There is not much information available on this one, but one look at the tracktitles suggests a certain theme: a pandemic outbreak. Avian influenza, anyone? The music itself is minimalist electronica which mainly resides in the higher part of the sound spectrum. Now, I can certainly enjoy minimalist electronica, see for example my earlier review on Jan M. Iversen's album "Wiederkehrende Welten", but I find I have the greatest difficulty focussing on this album.

It starts promising with "Itself Like The Flu", which features a creepy rhythm, but after this the songs just slip through my fingers like sand. I have given this album a spin or five already, but everytime I notice the album is suddenly finished and I find myself wondering "just what exactly did I listen to?". I think this is partially because most tracks are very short, sometimes just over the two minute mark, and the album itself is on the short side, lasting just 24 minutes. To me it feels there is too little happening in most of the tracks. They just don't get the chance to bury themselves into your subconscious, to then suddenly emerge again and grab your attention. Something which does tend to happen to me with longer compositions. No, I think I'll skip this one, a bit too minimalist to my taste. For those who are interested, I advise you to have a look at Dark Winter's website as there are links to three videoclips on YouTube that are rather grisly.

- Originally written for the Dutch weblog IkEcht, English translation by the author.