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Review: 'Harmonious Thelonius'
'Plong'   

-  Label: 'bureau b'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '28th August 2020'

Our Rating:
Promising a combination of ‘American-influenced minimal music with African rhythms and European melodies,’ Harmonius wastes no time locking into a thwocking krautrock groove on ‘Plong’, with ‘Original Member of a Wedding Band’, the first in a series of irreverent and maybe even irrelevant titles on an album of instrumental works defined by heavily repetitive motifs.

The percussion is more overtly ‘world’ on third track, ‘Geistertrio Booking’, which is a multi-dimensional set of sounds, whereby chiming dulcimer sounds bounce with systematic regularity, while a dog’s bark provide punctuation. Things get a lot more wibbly on ‘Abu Synth’, and the repetitious shuffling groove of ‘Mumba’ is a little reminiscent of Yello.
Across the album’s 9 compositions, it’s the repetition, even more than the tonal range or stylistic incorporations that really stands out as the defining feature.

There is a distinctly dance feel to the insistent ebb and flow of ‘Young Kong’, and while much of it’s in the tempo, again the hypnotic repetition, when propelled by a relentless beat, becomes trance-like. But by halfway through ‘Totentanz’, the album’s last track, I am so ready to stop as the monotonous gratings become too much, like art resembling life. Maybe you can have too much of a good thing.

  author: Christopher Nosnibor

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