Moonkin & Dense 'Wave Soaring' Review

Artist:

Moonkin & Dense

Title:

Wave Soaring

Label:

Synchronos Recordings

Released:

20^th April

This release is a collaboration between up-and-coming Swedish artist Moonkin and the long established Dense from Germany. Advertised as psy-chill that covers melodic ambient tunes and well paced groovy beats.

I found this release as a whole something that is very easy to switch off too. Deep ambient synths with twitches of tones that flicker through the tracks, on occasion there’s a touch of guitar. A couple of tracks ‘Birds Eye View’ and ‘Starboard’ take the two-step approach in places. However, this is definitely leaning more towards chill out than out and out drum and bass.

While ‘Mermaid’s Call’ which as the title suggests features some vocal tones. I felt the overall vibe harps back to the beach bar sounds of Cafe Del Mar, with bird song, melodic flutes and guitar that lift off the slow paced drum patterns behind the piece. This for me is the stand out track and quite different to the rest of the release.

Reviewed by Woodzee

Links

https://synchronos-recordings.bandcamp.com/album/moonkin-dense-wave-soaring

Dense 'Revived Stones' Review

Artist: Dense

Title: Revived Stones

Label: Cosmicleaf

Released: 9^th October 2019

I’m not overly familiar with the solo productions of Berlin based Dense. In fact my knowledge stems back some time to his collaboration with GMO and the album ‘Tales from the Yellow Kangaroo’ and more recently ‘The Blue Hole’.

The album begins with a slightly soulful vocal intro on ‘Entering Triton’ and harps back slightly to said Yellow Kangaroo with a somewhat Aboriginal feel. This is followed by a more laid back chilled trance vibe on ‘Signals from Thalassa’ and the sparse vocals work better for me in this piece. Whilst ‘Siren’ introduces an acoustic guitar riff that adds an atmosphere of a sunny beach to subtle seductive vocals and I’m beginning to warm to this release.

Housey piano notes lead you in ‘Don’t Make Me Yours’ which has a little more drive than the previous pieces and kind of puts me in mind of Depeche Mode with a female vocal a very pleasant track indeed. There’s a touch of an acidic underbelly to the plodding beat and harmonious tones of ‘Landing Save in Naiad’ the first instrumental of the album. This is followed by ‘Halimede’ another which utilises a more intricate pattern with plenty of twist and turns from angelic vocal harmonies to darker gritter synth stabs.

This mood continues in a similar vein with ‘Psamathe’ with the vocal harmonies replaced by spoken word with a touch of reverb. Finally to close ‘The Missed Chance’ fuses eerie synth sounds with a trip-hop like beat, dubbed out spoken words and operatic harmonies.

Reviewed by Woodzee.

Links

https://cosmicleaf.bandcamp.com/album/revived-stones