Villebråd
Ultrarapid
Transubstans Records
There are some nice musical moments on this, the second full-length release from the Uppsala crew, although they're sadly few and far between. It's a decent enough album, but the one thing that I've come to realize over the course of at least half a dozen run-throughs of "Ultrarapid" is that this works much better as background music than it does as something that you would put on to actually listen to. The songs are such that you wouldn't skip over one if it played as a random selection on your iPod but, by the same token, you would rarely find yourself deliberately giving any of them a spin. Well, apart from one, maybe. "Feberdröm", it must be said, is a sublime creation and easily the best on the album. It's uplifting and vibrant and is one of those songs that finds you playing it back-to-back on each pass. Production-wise, the vocals are so high in the mix that they undermine a lot of the positive aspects of the album -- the actual music. But, even though a lot of the music on here is good, it does border on the pretentious at times. Sometimes it's quite close to a progged-up, guitar-driven A-ha and, with "Scoundrel days" remaining one of my all-time favourite albums, those moments do serve as highlights, if only for a false sense of nostalgia. A strange one to see on the roster and, disappointingly, one that doesn't do the label any favors.
- John Norby
