SPLINTERS, VOL. II: BRUISE

I had given the first part of the "Splinters" five stars and was of course very curious about the second part. Once more this is very tasteful, subtle, and atmospheric progressive electronic music with exactly the mix of structure, meditation, and sound experimentation that I love. The sound is once more amazing. It is surely rather minimal music, and nobody will cal it "rock" despite the post rock past of the band. There are rhythmic elements, but normally that's only a periodically repeated sound or beat, just to give the music some spine, but not in any way dominating. About half of the time there's no rhythmic sound at all. In fact we are surely not on solid earthly grounds here, one could either associate outer space or underwater with this music. Also it is very slow and requires patience and/or the ability to immerse oneself in meditative sound. Sure, neither underwater nor in outer space the human concept of time has much of a meaning. Still, despite the slow and minimalist proceedings, the music is more inventive than much that I've heard from the progressive electronic camp, and despite its experimental character, it is quite gentle to the ears.

Vol. I of Splinters had just a single track of 43 minutes. The second volume starts with the 24 minutes of "Bruise", which concept- and quality-wise is the legitimate continuation of Vol. I. On top of it we get five shorter tracks, "Receptor" and "Nydised" around 9 minutes, the other three around six minutes. Stylistically these are not different from Vol. I and "Bruise", however "Tremor" from Vol. I and "Bruise" together can be seen as the real five star masterpiece "Splinters". This music works best on the grand scale with plenty of time for and effort devoted to development. I do like the other five tracks, too, but they have a less elaborated and cohesive feel and lack the genius to really shine on their own as much as the two-part excursion of which only a third is to be found on the Vol. II album. They would work well as tasters to announce the magnum opus, but as things stand, we get the magnum opus first (including Vol. I of course) and then some more music that has a certain "cutting room floor" feel. No complaints really, but I ultimately end up with 3.7 stars rather than the 5 stars of Vol. I. Still I recommend this mainly for the very rewarding 24 minutes of "Bruise", to be listened together with Vol. I.