Swedish Beauty — Audrey Hepburn Remembered; A Skönhet Tribute
The plain black shelled cassette features a series of scratches on it, and this is presented in a single-sided monochrome cover. It takes in a big main close up picture of Ms Hepburn on its front cover, and a smaller one inside. The release came in an edition of 20 copies, sadly these are now all sold-out, so ones only option is the download.
The Skönhet project had a fairly short run of just three years between 2009 and 2011. Though it’s seen as one of the classic projects of the genre- putting out a total of around fourteen releases. Behind the project was Swedish based Karl T- also of Självhat & Chloe projects, and runner of the highly influential/ respected HNW label HarshFuckedForLife Records. So it's project that’s very much due to a tribute in its own right.
Each side of the tape takes in a single track, and first, off we have “She Just Glowed When The Camera Started”. This just like Skönhet tracks opens with a sample, but instead of a sample from either Hepburn film or musical number- we get a brief snippet of a man talking about her in front of the camera. When the ‘wall’ kicks in it’s a rapidly moving mix of blunt bass hacks ‘n’ rolls and rumbling static rustles ‘n’ rubs, with some slight sub-tone drags & rattles. The whole thing is nicely raging it’s muffling, yet battering attack, with De Coene nicely pay tribute to the Skönhet, but adding in his own nicely battering-yet-crudely blunt sensibilities.
Flipping over, and we have “She Drew Them Into Reality”. And once again we get another short dialogue/music sample, once again this sounds like it’s a snippet of a doc about Ms Hepburn, as we find a man talking about how she brought her characters alive on the screen. When the ‘wall’ kicks in we find a blend of a tangled 'n' battering low-end, juddering ’n’ reverberating rattle, and thinner static edged jitter. Once again the ‘wall’ has a wonderful muffled & murky feel, with De Coene really nicely blending the textures together in a nicely ragged ‘n’ slightly ripped fashion.
All told it’s great to see De Coene doing his tribute to Skönhet and Ms Hepburn, and I do hope this isn’t a one-off, as both ‘walls’ are worthy in their own rights. As mentioned early this release is sold out, and it seemingly went rather quick, so clearly there is interest in the Skönhet project- maybe someone will look at reissue a few of the long out of print releases from Skönhet, because it would be great to have some of their classic titles back in print once more.