Search - Elvind Aarset :: Connected

Amazing

Derek L. Kaplan | Vancouver, BC | 09/10/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I was slightly apprehensive when I bought it. I already owned "Light Extracts", and had mixed feelings about it-- in that album I felt he never returned to the sense of touch, balance, and subtlety that the first track showed, and instead for the most part veared off into an excess of cock-in-hand rhythm sections and overlapping layers of aggressive textures. I can go there, but in moderation, and to me that album exceeds tolerances.



This album sounds as if upon reflection, he thought the same thing. It still piles up the sound in places, but with so much better a sense of placement and balance over the course of the disc, and contrasted against sections of greater subtlety of texture, melodic development, and progression. Compositionally it is stellar, it has the sound of experiments and searchings that are finding a shape, maturing and paying off. Highly recommended."