Description:	Digi pak CD on Music Related
	Format:	CD
	Genre(s):	Experimental / Abstract
	Label:	Music Related
	Price:	£7.99
	Availability:	Sold out / currently unavailable. Sorry!

4
...according to our Brett on 26 September 2008.

Well what do you know, you wait for one CD with accordion on and seventeen come along at once! Well, two. This Praveen & Benoit release isn't a split like that other one though, they've gotten together like women at a book club. Aww.. It's called Songs Spun Simla and it's really right proper seriously good. It plods along at a leisurely pace but not in the shite way that usually implies, it's just gentle and relaxing.. Even when the intensity goes up a notch it keeps that effect. Breathy, reverb-y vocals tickle your ear sticks while pianos plink, cymbals splash and other interesting sounds come into and out of the mix, particularly the aforementioned accordion. It all sounds very Kranky.. Lovely floaty shit, like a more dreamy Hood perhaps. Recommended!

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What their label says...

It’s all in the wires. Praveen Sharma and Thomas Meluch (aka Benoît Pioulard) have met only a handful of times and have never resided in the same city, but over the course of two-plus years they have been quietly assembling Songs Spun Simla, a brief but luminescent collection of pieces driven by Praveen’s inventive arrangements and Benoît’s lush vocal harmonizing. Praveen released his remarkable debut Backed by Spirits on the now-defunct Neo Ouija imprint just as Benoît emerged with the Enge EP on Michigan’s Moodgadget label in early 2005. Through mutual contacts they found that each was an admirer of the other’s work, and the seeds for a casual collaboration were sown. Not long after, Praveen returned from a profound journey through his family’s native India with a minidisk full of field recordings and voices, forming the basis of opener “The Tunnel is Still There”. As he continued creating new songs with an ever-expanding palette of instruments and digital effects, Benoît arranged lyrics and harmonies, driven by the unfamiliarity and excitement of the process. Various ideas arose concerning the fate of these works, but once a record’s worth had been amassed, their friends at Music Related expressed interest in a proper release. Songs Spun Simla is named in honor of the village in India from which Praveen’s family originates – it’s inseparable from his musical inspirations yet still distant and shaped largely by memory. His compostions exist on a fitting scale, then; from the stunning, expansive lead-in of “Death as a Man” to the incredibly detailed percussion of “To Scale”, there’s a sense of worldliness, history and nostalgia placed in a crucible with technology and innovation. Much like a travelogue, the six movements of Songs Spun Simla abut soaring highs with passages of quiet, intimate beauty to create a deeply affecting whole.