Tangtype — Flake Out

Basically, in a past life, the music of Tangtype is a form of acoustic folk. The music on their debut is heavily distorted in a laptop, so 'acoustic' and 'folk' are reduced to sourcematerial for electronic tapestries.

Julie and jf from Belgium, make dreamy pop not unlike Tujiko Noriko. Julie provides the dreamy and folky vocals, she took lessons from a Turkish teacher named Sibel, but you don't hear that. The Turkish aspect that is, the singing qualities are shining bright. Her voice is soft and fragile but far from weak. The other half, Jean-François was schooled on violin, but decided to stop playing other people's music to start making his own sounds. He takes sounds, from a variety of sources besides the recurring guitar and processes them to extremes in his computer. His complex and dense electronics on paper could form an interesting contrast with a more songbased nature of Julie's vocals, but I feel he overdoes it a bit and the songs get lost in Fenneszy but also somewhat messy electronics. But it's not only the electronic part, even the almost acoustic percussion/gamelan piece closing the album is tather restless.

The dreamy prospect of acoustic guitar and female vocals is somewhat shattered by the rather hectic laptop treatment. I think the music might be served with some air to let things breathe a bit more, as the hailstorm of bits and bytes sometimes is a tad irritating, which has Flake Out being stuck at the level of what music critics call "a promising debut".