Title: Plastic
Artist: [Haven]
Genre: Electronic
Release Date: 28th July 2009
Label: Tympanik Audio
Album Review
Hailing from Poland is the project of Marcin Jarmulski named [Haven] that first appeared in the year 2005 by releasing ‘The Last Breath of lonely Buildings’ in 2005. The album was followed up by ‘NAOS’ (2006) and ‘[A2982]’ (2008). For his newest full-length ‘Plastic’, released in this year’s summer, he’s joined the ever growing roster of Tympanik Audio.
The scent of a vague danger will hit your nose upon listening to the first track of the album ‘Tell Me about Madness’, melding with a subtle melancholy and a basic twitching rhythm. With ‘Marrakech’ the focus is shifting towards rather percussive, distorted patterns, interacting with the slightly oriental flavoured chant sample before the song starts to explore ambient realms as well. ‘Let’s play Disco Now’ evokes poor urban environments with the weeping piano touches and strings that are eventually pushed by a beat of a slightly different time signature. ‘Plastic Bag’ takes things to a higher level in terms of rhythmic complexity with its overlapping, stuttering patters encompassed by a sense of grief, created with the literally mourning strings, chorals and piano. It seems a thunderstorm is approaching, its echoes resounding dull in the distance in the beginnings of ‘Les Choses’.
Filled with a strange kind of hopelessness, the pads will be taking you further over repetitive beats until the sound of a violin bleeding sadness appears on the horizon, completely disconnecting you from any happy feelings you might have felt before. The sound of a cold winter night in the north with ghostly green lights hanging in the sky is the theme of ‘Aurora Borealis’, a sometimes eerie but endlessly intriguing piece of music that closes the album, making way for two remixes added as a bonus treat for you. [Haven] has a knack for thick and urgent atmospheres, no doubt about that. However, I think that the album in parts lacks some rhythmic diversity. The patterns sometimes are just too monotonous to really keep up the interest like the atmospheric work does. Anyway, be sure to risk your ears as it’s, regardless of its flaws, way above average after all.
Tracklist
01. Tell me about Madness - 2:35
02. Marrakech - 4:04
03. Out of the Vertical - 3:43
04. Let's play Disco now - 4:22
05. Plastic Bag - 3:16
06. Les Choses - 3:43
07. Mental Courtesan - 3:21
08. Kuhajrib - 3:51
09. Tree of Life - 4:59
10. Home - 2:38
11. Broken Childhood - 4:19
12. Aurora Borealis - 3:48
13. Everything Burns - 2:54
14. Takir al Masir - 3:41
15. Aurora Borealis (Slow Power Remix by Aphorism) - 5:15
16. Kuhajrib (Tapage Remix) - 5:33
Line-Up
Marcin Jarmulski
Website
http://www.myspace.com/havenproject
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 7
Sound: 7
Extras: -
Total: 7 / 10
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