LIbrary Tapes - "Höstluft"

Label: Make Mine Music
Year: 2007

Library Tapes, the fitting pseudonym of Swedish feller David Wenngren, has over his last two albums crafted a distinctive sound that's won him a sizeable and dedicated audience. Although he's lost the able talents of previous member Per Jardsall, he still manages to craft a record which will no doubt please his followers. Once again we return to the sounds of aged creaking and clicking piano keys, recorded to tape or set against crackling, hissing field recordings to give the illusion of age, the illusion that you're hearing something that was discovered deep in a forgotten basement somewhere. It might sound rather clichéd now with solo piano recordings coming like machinegun fire, but Wenngren has a distinctive touch taking influence from Erik Satie, Goldmund and William Basinski ('Melancholia' to be exact...) and then re-casting the pieces to make them totally his own. In fact the crumbling background noise which is so apparent in his works becomes just as important to the tracks as the piano, and the more you get absorbed into this fizzing and hissing the more you see what Wenngren is attempting to achieve. What he has done with 'Hostluft' is create a small window into another world, a short story or a discarded film reel, and for the duration (a meagre 34 minutes) you are transported there absolutely. Lovely stuff.

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