Pink Caves

Audio Mixer: Tadklimp.
Arranger: Fenster .
Fenster's sophomore full-length album, 2014's The Pink Caves, is an atmospheric, dreamlike work that finds the German experimental outfit crafting a surrealistic pastiche of sounds that pushes them well beyond the rootsy, folk-inflected approach of 2012's Bones. Recorded in an East German cabin that the band wired so as to record any sound in any room of the house, The Pink Caves is full of ambient percussion and hypnotic found sounds that purportedly include slammed doors, animals in the yard, ticking clocks, and other sundry items in the house, essentially allowing the cabin to become both a recording studio and an instrument in and of itself for the members to utilize as inspiration hit. Fenster then combined all of these recordings with their own guitars, keyboards, electronics, drums, and echoey vocals to create a wholly new musical environment for their songs. In that sense, the album brings to mind the work of artists like Sigur Rós, Brian Eno, and My Bloody Valentine. However, Fenster never come off as trying to fit into any specific genre such as shoegaze or noise pop. Ultimately, The Pink Caves has a haunting, surrealistic quality that, while melodic and song-based at times, also feels abstract and organic, as if these songs were not so much written by the band as cultivated as they grew out of the earth. ~ Matt Collar