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A beautiful record to listen to, and possibly one of my favourites of 2011. The whole of Errante’s work is informed by a feeling of precise and well-regulated calm; in this, the record can be approached as one to relax or meditate to, but be warned as this is a very powerful trip, as the sheer stillness sometimes can leave the listener somewhat disorientated. Still, it’s a sublime thing to be immersed in such a sensual rich stew of loops and effects: what instrumentation is discernable is channelled through short cadences and phrases that are repeated endlessly.
This feeling of druggy enmeshment is very strong with Made to Give, which conjures up mental images of standing on the beach, watching a tide ebb and flow. It reminds this old git of Klaus Dinger’s two sensual masterpieces from his Neu! years; Lieber Honing, or Leb’ Wohl from Neu! 75. The Zen-like patterns are possibly best expressed on Counterclockwise where a piano skips over a metronomic phrase that begins to resemble a pulse, and Inner, where rich synth phasing gives a platform for a few abstract guitar strums and plucks. You really have to watch yourself at this stage, as it can put you in a pretty bewildered state, one that is slightly adjacent to normal notions of time and the monolithic synth wall and guitar phrases that lick off the following track, Later Earlier, may come as a shock.
For all its stillness and wide-eyed vibe, there’s the sneaking feeling that the record is a brilliant travelogue, like an ambient cousin to TEE or Empires and Dance. Dorian’s Mirror has the feeling of standing on a station in the early hours with its rich and sweeping synth textures, and I’m sure the moody Memoirs was built especially with the purpose of staring out of a train window in mind.
A marvellous record.