Based in Berlin, Alexander Hacke and Danielle de Picciotto (doing business as hackedepicciotto for this release) are both musical and life partners, and Keepsakes<\/i> is their fifth full length recording. Each of these nine tunes is intended to represent a friend, with the couple stating that the record is \u201can ode to friendship, presenting songs of gratitude.\u201d That makes this a rather sweet and tender concept album. It might also be why parts of the record feel like a soundtrack, even aside from some of the songs being instrumental. Perhaps Hacke and de Picciotto have composed little soundtracks for bits of their friends\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n
The couple\u2019s music has always been somewhat experimental and avant-garde, which should come as no surprise. Hacke remains best known for being a founding member of the titanic Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten, but has also played in Crime and the City Solution and collaborated with Wovenhand\u2019s David Eugene Edwards, among numerous other things. American-born de Picciotto co-founded Love Parade, the political \u201cdance music festival and technoparade\u201d that was held in Berlin for a number of years beginning in 1989. As a duo they\u2019ve been releasing records together since the latter part of the 2000s.<\/p>\n
Much like recent Neubauten albums, these songs often have a gentle quality about them, probably representing the couple\u2019s affection for their comrades. There is also a fairy tale or folk song vibe running throughout. The first track, \u201cTroubadour,\u201d is a good example of that, with its languid, walking pace and cryptic lyrics combining with dulcimer strings and electronics to create something that wouldn\u2019t sound out of place in your local psychedelic forest. <\/p>\n
The second song, \u201cAichach,\u201d is one of the aforementioned instrumentals, and this time a violin combines with electronics and a dark, dancefloor atmosphere to create an apposite accompaniment to a German film noir. Speaking of noir, it sounds like electronic rain is falling in the background of \u201cAnthem\u201d while de Picciotto recites impressionistic images associated with the song\u2019s subject and horns swirl. It\u2019s notable how the album rises and falls throughout, the music not always demanding strict attention, but also never retreating to the background.<\/p>\n
De Picciotto and Hacke then trade off singing and reciting in \u201cLa Femme Sauvage,\u201d with sparse instrumentation that includes tubular bells and strings, this tribute to a wild woman somewhat contradictorily (or not?) sounding a bit like a melody lifted from a music box. \u201cMastodon\u201d heads the other direction with swirling drones, lone violin, and what may (or may not) be human sighs lurking below the otherwise instrumental bed. \u201cSchwarze Milch,\u201d which translates as \u201cblack milk\u201d (a few languages appear across the album), is a jazzy, cosmopolitan stroll of a tune, again with fairly minimal vocalizing, while \u201cLovestuff\u201d has lots of voices which, as throughout most of the record, are gentle and beguiling. <\/p>\n
Breaking the eight minute mark, \u201cSong Of Gratitude\u201d is by far the longest track on the album, and perhaps the only one that could be said to be at all ominous. What could be interpreted as waves underlie distorted bass with some occasional choral singing furthering the sense of gravity. While one can\u2019t help but wonder who these songs were written for\u2014after all, this duo count some well-known people as friends\u2014it would be especially interesting to know (or possibly be!) the person for whom \u201cSong Of Gratitude\u201d was composed. <\/p>\n
The final track, \u201cThe Blackest Crow,\u201d is probably the most traditionally played song on the record, which makes perfect sense as it has its origin in a Civil War-era Appalachian ballad of farewell that also has ties to the Ozarks. A wistful waltz, it\u2019s not far from the shadowy Americana of Albuquerque\u2019s Handsome Family. While I find \u201cSong Of Gratitude\u201d to be the most striking tune on the album, Hacke and de Picciotto present a lovely take on this very old air. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Keepsakes<\/i> was tracked in one of Europe\u2019s oldest recording spaces, the Auditorium Novecento in Naples, Italy, which was used by Ennio Morricone, and it sounds immaculate. Everything is bright and clear and spacious and there is no danger of listener fatigue. That said, as I mentioned, this is often instrumental, somewhat avant-garde music that operates without typical instrumentation or structure. Again, if that sounds bit like Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten I\u2019ll add that it\u2019s also in line with the quieter material EN\u2019s Blixa Bargeld has released lately, particularly with Teho Teardo. If you have enjoyed that music and have not heard Hacke and de Picciotto then you\u2019re in for a treat. If you\u2019re new to all this, Keepsakes<\/i> isn\u2019t a bad place to start, and I might recommend pairing it with Neubauten\u2019s Silence Is Sexy<\/i> for a Sunday morning comedown of whatever sort you may need.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":34834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10871],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46701","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-hackedepicciotto","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46701"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}