Slaraffenland produces increasingly choral, more danceable Danish transitions of Animal Collective's jangle-drudge experimental-pop instrumentation for Hometapes. But this is an unfair beginning in describing their sound.
No joke: if you listen to the chorus line on "Watch Out", it sounds like a Duran Duran/Simon and Garfunkel mashup! It's as if Slaraffenland wants their vocals to sound sadly homogeneous. As you can imagine, this is amazing and cannot be missed.
With more attention to rhythm than folk music can possibly sustain, the band mixes rare, energetic Bloc Party-era beats, with woodsy guitar narrations. Aware of the present electronica resurgence, these Scandinavian musicians reproduce the spacious references to AIR and the repetitive callousness of trance. Atonal wind movements often set pensive tones that later give way to patient licks on invisible-sounding guitars, tiny with overly careful sound engineering. In "The Run Up", a harmonica makes a brief appearance before what sounds like a trombone smoothly snuffs it out. Casual hypnotists, Slaraffenland know how to collage a muddled harmony from soupy reverb, tangled bass lines, and babbling horns. The album even offers a few ambient/musique concrete tracks. "You Win" is very grinding and almost industrial. Unless I decide it is too musically diverse for me to understand as a complete album, Private Cinema, will be one of those recordings I recommend for best of 2007.
I have no idea of this band or album is indicative of anything that may soon come out of Denmark. I did recently review a band called AVE, who offer a fantastic, almost nostalgic take on something like Radiohead. Come to think if it, Denmark may be the next big scene for downbeat pop music.