Möllan Sessions

This is an album that it would be very easy to overlook, but doing so would be a shame -- more than the vast majority of electronic releases, The Möllan Sessions taps a rich and deep vein of emotion and allusion, and does so both quietly and with irresistible power. It accomplishes this, interestingly enough, by making groove the servant of texture rather than vice versa: basslines exist, but they are often so low and mixed so deeply into the background as to be nearly subliminal; drums create regular rhythmic patterns (particularly on the nearly house-like "Horizon" and "Thursday: Connection"), but they also create arrhythmic raw material for flights of flanged and delayed fancy. The album opens incredibly slowly and gradually, with a track ("Monday Conversations") that will have you doubting whether your music player is working correctly before the slowly chugging beat and echoing bits of random percussion fade into audibility. "Hello People of Earth!" starts in a somewhat more businesslike manner, but is similarly soft, ethereal, and haunting in its blend of rhythmic pulse and dubwise flutter. It would be tempting to characterize much of this music as minimalist, but it isn't -- a great richness of texture and a wide variety of musical elements are at play in each track. It's just that it's very quiet. "Deeply" quiet might be a better way of putting it. ~ Rick Anderson