Artist: Løwentsåhn Hølunder
Title: Micro-Wave
Genre: Minimal, Wave, Electro
Release Date: 4th January 2015
Label: self-released
Album Review
1. Anna Blume hat einen Vogel.
What to think about a SISTERS OF MERCY cover, dressed in the bleakest retro-electro tapestry, properly served with moog-sound and adorned with the sampled bleating of grazing sheep? Godless heresy or a splendid joke?
What to do with song titles like ‘Re-Hør-Sål’, ‘Psykøseksuål’, ‘Fåk-Ju-Ål’ or ‘Åsøziål’, challenging every keypad and revealing a rude mixture of sounds and genres, a stylistic anarchy that combines punk with electro, NDW with surf rock and minimal with Neofolk? And what if you then realize that history claims that Løwentsåhn Hølunder is an audio-visual project founded in 2008 by the artist Låsse Kømmen and the erotic shaman Måtti Kalkūlen (later joined by multi-instrumentalist Dåni Køksen and the fallout-diva Katjusha) in the cosy setting of Lapland, that small plot of land in Europe's most northern periphery, famous for glaciers, reindeers and patchwork clothing? I think then at the latest you should have realized that there are some guys, who have a brilliant kind of humour and LH is a winking sheep (!) in a wolf skin.
2. Anna Blume ist rot.
‘Micro-Wave’ is about dissection and illumination, about exposing attitudes and clenched sobrieties throughout all the genres LH borrowing from with naked spite. It is about red herrings and feints, about pearls and swine. And when Kalkülen and Katjusha duet existential lines like ‘Fåk-Ju-Ål!’ then you can be sure that first and foremost it is meant literally. It is about irony and the blessing to take nothing and no one too seriously, least of all yourself. And so the band name points pharmaceutically to diaphoretics and detoxification, so the above mentioned SISTERS song becomes ‘(Åb)Døminål (Mother Lapland)’ and so the track ‘Åsøziål’ is renamed ‘Nåtsiønål’ for its great atmospheric Neofolk-version, which comes around with lines like:"Meine Mimik hart wie Kruppstahl / meine Augen so verträumt / die Geschichte, Drittes Reich hab ich irgendwie versäumt... ich fühl mich frei wenn ich marschiere / Attitüde - National..." and this is unerringly, smart and quite brilliant.
3. Welche Farbe hat der Vogel?
And the humour works so well, because they celebrate it so credibly and convincingly, in a musical way and relating to an attitude, so that you really have to dive into it, with ears and eyes open for bouncing upon the resolving layer. The playing with clichés is that clever and skilful that its true identity flashes here and there only, masked with a grinning graveness that keeps you in a permanent state of mirrored verity. (And I wouldn't be surprised if the songs of LH will be blindly embraced by those they're laughing about!) And when in ’Psykøseksuål’ Låsse Kømmen repeats the freely adapted Crowleyan catchphrase "Alle machen Liebe / Alle ficken alle" again and again, embedded in a impulsive and hypnotic rhythm, made for drowning in dance and ecstasy, then it is almost Dada for the foggy dance floor, beyond rules beyond graces and simply brilliant.
Oh, and just in case of ironic resistance: Løwentsåhn Hølunder aren't a Lappish band at all, but a side-project of members of a well-known Cologne-based Post-Punk/ Goth outfit, but I think you should brew a tea now and solve the riddle on your own...
Tracklist
01. Mikrømål
02. Selle Røyål
03. Rustikål
04. Åsøziål
05. Mårginål
06. Jåmmertål
07. Re-Hør-Sål (Der Konzertpianist)
08. Fåk-Ju-Ål
09. Psykøseksuål
10. Nåtsiønål (Neøfåkk-Version of Åsøziål)
11. (Åb)Døminål (Mother Lapland)
Line-up
Låsse Kømmen – Vocals
Måtti Kalkūlen – Guitars, Programming
Katjusha – Vocals
Dåni Køksen – Bass
Website
https://www.facebook.com/LowentsahnHolunder
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 8
Sound: 7
Total: 7.5 / 10
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