Purelle is the duo of Adrian Knight, who handles synth, rhodes, guitar, and percussion, and David Lackner, who holds down sax, flute, EWI, and percussion. Together their 45+ minutes of music spans just four tunes. Both of the players have had their hands in plenty of other bands and projects (although the hands on the cover art here belong to Alice Cohen), and their experimental ideas have always resided somewhere between jazz fusion, art-punk, and carefully constructed noise.
“Bahia Honda” starts the listen out with hazy, lethargic ideas over the sounds of waves crashing, as it builds into an ambient, textured and mesmerizing display of jazz-lite tendencies. “Over Easy” follows and is a bit darker in scope with more attention to percussion, as the warbling and elegant sounds keep us enthralled for the entire 10 minutes.
“Gotta Have It!,” a more dance rock oriented track, brings us soundbites and a dreamy quality with an ultra-stylish approach and plenty of club friendly beats before “Love Dream” ends the effort with over 12 minutes of mysterious, glowing, surreal landscapes that unfold like a late night drive through the desert that you can’t figure out was fact or fiction. There’s an eerie, hypnotic feel present on this standout song that is occasionally interrupted by the distant brass, which only further punctuates just how unusual this album is.
If you’re going to want a physical copy of this one, it is only on cassette and is hand numbered and limited to just 100 copies. Much like everything on the Galtta label, it’s an iconoclastic, highly atypical environment and just bleeds creativity from beginning to end. While some people may find this a little too niche for their enjoyment, fans of all things unorthodox will absorb every second of its unpredictable nature.
