Frederik Valentin & Loke Rahbek — Elephant

Elephant is the second album from this duo after Buy Corals Online, released on Editions Mego in 2017. Valentin is better known as one half of experimental ambient pop group Kyo, while Rahbek has released critically acclaimed work as Croatian Amor and with his Posh Isolation colleague Christian Stadsgaard as noise duo Damien Dubrovnik. Like its predecessor Elephant shows these two seasoned electronic musicians in relaxed and relatively accessible form, producing a series of instrumentals that draw on ambient, modern classical and even folk sources, with the creative elan we've come to expect from the Posh Isolation label.

Rahbek's recent records have mirrored the diversification of Posh Isolation's output over the same period. From being a dark ambient and industrial project Croatian Amor has developed into a vehicle for experimenting with weird forms of pop and R&B, while his collaborations with Jonas Rönnberg have explored the darker side of techno and synth music. All these influences are apparent across Elephant's eight diverse tracks, dovetailing nicely with Valentin's own ambient and experimental tendencies. There's a delicacy and lightness of touch evident from the first two tracks Solina and Touch and Vision, both of which use relatively untreated acoustic instrumentation in combination with minimal electronics. Scarlett is the longest piece here and a standout slab of blissed-out (yes I think that's the expression) electro-acoustic techno. Loops of treated vocal samples blend into repeated acoustic guitar melodies, which in turn sit beautifully among the sequenced electronics. Ducking and diving over eight glorious minutes this could easily be the musical equivalent of the bright playful cover which adorns the LP.

I said it was a diverse record, and these two artists were never likely to be content with producing a uniformly upbeat set of songs. In waves is a funereal drone and strings composition that brings us back down to the cold dead earth with bump. While Call Me By My True Names is all throbbing analogue electronics and heavily treated voices and found sounds. Sense World is perhaps the record's most abrasive moment, opening with sharp blasts of near white noise and discordant electronic melodies. It nevertheless opens up into a filmic panorama of drones, FX and distant string melodies. If the record started off sounding intimate, almost homely, then by the time we get to The Heart of Things the duo have set their production firmly to wide-screen mode, with this track another high-point of the album. Starting with drones evoking images of vast oceanic vistas, they then introduce field recordings of children playing before the gently strummed guitar and piano of the earlier tracks return, augmented by what sounds like bowed strings and even harmonica buried in there. It's a lovely transition suggestive of some the folk tinged work of Richard Skelton or even Peter Broderick.

The title track which plays the record out is a final curve ball of doom laden drones and a strangely playful overdriven synth lead which gets gradually louder and more like a female voice, before the tracks ends abruptly. Elephant is a standout record for these artists, both of whom have been refining their craft over the last few years, breaking out of the limitations of noise and industrial music and producing genuinely new and innovative sounds. The range, depth and maturity of the music found here should hopefully mean it is widely heard.