Slaraffenland
Private cinema
Rumraket
"Private cinema" from Denmark's Slaraffenland is a very smart record, as accessible as it is 'avant-garde'. There is a fair amount of experimentation, but Slaraffenland take many opportunities to find buried melodies and beauty even in the less conventional tracts of noise, their more exploratory segments, or moments of near-free form jazz. Stand out tracks like "Paranoid polaroids", "Watch out", and the magnificent closer "How far would you go" incorporate the strongest elements of the group, creating brilliant pieces that build and build, ending too soon, even as a few pass the five-minute marker. The only track on the record I could have done without is the completely unnecessary "Groen"; less of a song really than two minutes of bizarre noises, not 'noise' in the sense of the oft-misunderstood genre (which, ironically, the counterpart song "Roed" explores), just clamor with no direction whatsoever. Despite this minor failing, "Private cinema" has quickly become one of my favorite records - artier than the Arcade Fire, while still reachable and understandable in ways that some members of this experimental genre are not.
- Lars Garvey Laing-Peterson