textura

Albums
Jessica Bailiff
Basic Soul Unit
Christoph Berg
Billow Observatory
Bitcrush
Michael Blake
bvdub
Celer
Cello+Laptop
Sylvain Chauveau
The Colossal Ithaca Trio
Displacer
Kyle Bobby Dunn
Filterwolf
Ghost and Tape
Gunshae
Hideyuki Hashimoto
Szymon Kaliski
Fritz Kalkbrenner
Listening Mirror
The Peggy Lee Band
Yuri Lugovskoy
Missy Mazzoli
Melodium
Nebulo
Nite Lite
Frédéric Nogray
Offthesky & MWST
Pill-oh
Positive Flow
Le Réveil Des Tropiques
Scott Sherk
Andy Stott
Talvihorros
Robert Scott Thompson
To Destroy A City

Compilations / Mixes
Catz 'n Dogz
Cold Blue 2
Friendly Fires
Imaginational Anthem 5

Reissue
Jethro Tull

EPs / Singles
Aqua Marine
Jah Warrior
Landing
Manual
Ruffhouse
Chris Weeks
Xoki & Hieronymus

Ghost and Tape: Home
Schole

The music box tinkles, field recordings textures, and processed acoustic guitar playing flooding Home's first seconds tell you what to expect from self-taught guitarist and sound engineer Heine Christensen on his sophomore Ghost and Tape album: peaceful and pastoral acoustic electronica of a distinctly warm and ultra-immersive kind. The album title alone conveys a nostalgic quality, given the fond associations which the word evokes for most when they reflect on former homes, just as Christensen did when creating the recording (it's telling that most of the song titles refer to places in Barcelona and Copenhagen, both of them former homes of his). In a typical Home track, acoustic guitar picking (sometimes processed into slivers) is embedded within a dense pool of soft crackle and hiss, with the setting's wistful mood amplified by the presence of a secondary instrument or two, be it a melodica, subtle beat pattern, or other sampled analogue sound. In some pieces, however, the balance shifts such that the sound presents itself as a near-opaque mass within which the guitar becomes merely one texture of a great many.

Mastered with remarkable clarity (no small feat considering its density) by Taylor Deupree, the music exudes a gentle, sun-dappled quality that evokes the image of an early morning summer pond whose life forms are quietly awakening to the flickers of sunlight reflecting off of the water's surfaces. That feeling does, however, bleed over at times into an autumnal melancholy redolent of the transition from summer to fall. having said that, the music is never anything less than pretty. Compared to most of the material, “Taolin” sounds almost uptempo when, in fact, it's simply animated. Even so, its noodling guitar figures and rhythm pulses make it invite comparison to a typical I'm Not A Gun track, albeit one smothered in textures. Home's twelve originals are supplemented by remixes from Sawako and Paniyolo, the first a treatment of “Pere IV” that differs from the album's other tracks in including her soft voice amongst its other bell-laden sounds and the second a sparkling version of “Sankt Hans Torv” that sneaks woodwinds and lightly swinging drums into Christensen's setting. It hardly needs be said that admirers of the sounds produced by artists such as Chihei Hatakeyama and The Green Kingdom will likewise find good reason to embrace Christensen's Ghost and Tape music, too.

December 2012