CD Feature/ Aalfang mit Pferdekopf: "Genmaicha: At the Opal Seashore"
TobiasSomeone once quipped that talking about music was like dancing about architecture. This is so obviously wrong that we seriously suspect that it wasn’t in fact Frank Zappa who said it, but rather some hopeless cynic. On the other hand: Aren’t the biggest cynics just the romantics who got diappointed most? “Genmaicha” seems to have been written especially for them.
For this is an album that takes you all the way back. To a place and time, when nothing was important and nothing impossible. When worries were far away and there was only warmth, trust and tenderness. These two stretched-out pieces are the endless oceans of a nascent cosmos and an eternal womb – everything moves slower here, yet with the powerful and comforting heartbeat of mother gaia. When you’re inside a bubble, you can feel both safe and suffocated, both sensations are present here: After the frightening opening sequences of “The Fragrance of rice over green calm waves”, a long, longing sigh commences, which impalpably changes its colour and pulse – at times you will find your cradle being gently rocked by a tender hand and then again some evil claw is reaching out for you. Someone touches a fender rhodes by accident, but apart from that, there is no obvious melodies or themes, just harmony and a beating heart. “The Butterfly Dream”, then, sounds like the echo of a kiss inside a pitch-black tunnel, like bells striking in reverse against a cloth of felt. After fourty minutes, you’re leaving the Opal Seashore again – or is it leaving you?
This is Aalfang mit Pferdekopf’s fourth fabolous full-length, after his self-released debut and the “12 Seepferdchen” record on einzeleinheit and it should give back at least a glimmer of hope to all those broken souls out there. For, even if our description should only come half-way in portraying how great this music truly is, it doesn’t prove Zappa right. Instead, talking about music is like talking about love – just because it’s not the real thing, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.
Homepage: Aalfang mit Pferdekopf
Homepage: Mystery Sea Records
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2007-06-13