März Wir Sind Hier

[Karaoke Kalk; 2004]

Rating: 4/5

Styles: experimental pop, electro-acoustic
Others: Beachwood Sparks, The Books


Now this is what I'm talking about. It seems the results are far more interesting on a recording when a heady experimentalist (Ekkehard Ehlers) tackles pop structures than the other way around. Like the first disc of the recent Staubgold compilation, what we have here are warm acoustic textures and vocals woven into and out of fascinatingly dense sonic explorations in an utterly unpredictable fashion. But there's more.

Steady percussion doesn't grace Wir Sind Hier until two minutes into the third song. And it's dropped for a surprise brief horn part that comes back in the end. This song, entitled "The River," is a little dippy, but something about its restraint wins you over. This is summery, outdoorsy kind of contemplative music, which unlike Greg Davis' Curling Pond Woods delivers much better on the idea of bringing electronica out of the clubs and deep into the forest. The disco pulse of "Blaue Faden" ushers in something a little more direct, but its cascading harmonies and underlying banjo strums suggest a club with dry leaves covering the floor.

Maybe all this sounds a bit pretentious, but I can't help but marvel at how, after so many artists have supposedly married the cold bloodless laptop with earthy acoustics, somebody's finally accomplishing it in an admirably succinct fashion. "Some Things Do Fall" and "Biber & Enten (Plattler)" follow in the same throbbing, straight-up direction as "Blaue Faden," which is a little disappointing to this listener (it seems many German recording artists are more than a little hooked into this disco beat thing). Unfortunately, the merry banjos featured underneath "Blaue Faden" have kind of worn out their welcome by this point.

The lovely "Welt Am Draht" ushers the album back into the ether, continuing until we are graced with bouncy "The Pop Song," which alternates the singing from English to German. This and its galloping follow-up/closer "Wir Send Hier" fail to intrigue as affectively as the opening tracks, but further the album's unpredictability. Taken alongside other electro-acoustic acts coming out these days, März shows definite promise; and while their adventurousness is perhaps too tempered for my tastes, (though for Ehlers, these pop structures might be adventurous enough), there is a lot to love about the LP. There's a statelyness to the repetition on display that keeps any staleness from creeping in. And as I eluded to earlier, there is a subtleness to their hybridization that makes Wir Sind Hier something of a standout in their field.

1. Forever Never
2. März Im Park
3. The River
4. Tropige Trauben
5. Blaue Faden
6. Some Things Do Fall
7. Biber & Enten (Plattler)
8. Welt Am Draht
9. Oktober Im Park
10. The Pop Song
11. Wir Sind Hier