ANDREW PEKLER
Strings + Feedback [Staubgold]

Moving away from his previous two albums (Station to Station and last year's Nocturnes, False Dawns & Breakdowns) which sampled jazz, ambient experimentalist, Andrew Pekler's Strings + Feedback is another cinematic journey. This time, it's not "a random walk through the clear and mysterious air of a metropolis at midnight" as on his two previous albums, but a re-creation of a '50s low-budget science-fiction soundtrack. Working with sampled pianos and strings, Pekler modulates each sound to create rhythms, tension, melody and atmosphere. The album opens with P'luckd, a haunting melody of sensitive beauty. Before you know it, the strident strings of Ogonjok are plucking away in a rapid steady rhythm, the album's high point. Then Pekler shifts gear again and for the remaining seven tracks, he creates an ambience of brooding, unsolvable mystery through what sounds like archaic synthesisers and modulators (Mirrorise, Vor). Pekler's album is like the secrets of Forbidden Planet re-stated, and never so lovingly. (8) - Philip Cheah

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