soul by POEMBEAT

released September 9, 2013

The second part of a trilogy by guitarist and composer Poembeat, “Soul” follows “Mind” and offers six interleaved tracks reminiscent of the calm atmospheres created by very early Brian Eno (before the more muzak-style work of “… for Airports” etc. kicked in), and the less noisy side of contemporary guitar experimentalist Fennesz.

While titles like “Sad Moon”, “Against your Mind”, “Gospel”, and “Eternity” suggest a certain spiritual longing at the heart of this beautifully melancholic music, its great achievement is that it never becomes pathetic. Based on very stripped-down guitar figures – like an actual blues riff in the case of “Blues,” but one that is isolated from worn-out song structures –, this release offers a series of secular mantras, as it were. Poembeat puts great care into crafting the guitar sound so that it sounds crisp, yet still slightly decayed and not at all “polished.” This together with a vague ambience that sounds like it is made from residual noises left over from the recording gives the production a welcome worldliness: no metaphysics will rescue us from this entropic world, but beautiful music just might ;-)