Pawn
Above The Winter Oaks

4
...according to our Phil on 27 May 2010.

I love a bit of Pawn me. It's great. This is rather tastefully packaged in a black and white foldy spotty poster thing with a nipple attached so your CD doesn't go AWOL. That is the last thing in the world you'd want to happen. Hideki Umezawa is the man behind Pawn (previous releases on Cotton Goods and Symbolic Interaction) and in my last review of the chap I went on about how twinkly an' sparkly it was amongst other things. Within 5 minutes all I can hear are beautiful twinkles which are like little drops of water slowly falling onto a summer lake. I can be poetic when I try.... the music is constructed with field recordings i.e. 'Birds singing at trees, trampling fallen leaves in the park, brittle ambience in the air...' to quote the artist. They were recorded in winter and it's supposed to be wintery. I can see how but that totally ruins my whole summer lake thing. I guess they could be snowflakes falling onto a frozen lake. Yeah that would work. I'll go with that. It's pretty enough stuff and if you're a fan of electro-acoustic electronica with a high quota of twinkles and prettiness then you'll need this. Ltd to 200.

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Sound clips for Above The Winter Oaks by Pawn: on CD at Norman Records UK. CD, Thelandof, LND011, £9.79.

What their label says...

First, to make this album, I collected field sounds.

Birds singing at trees, trampling fallen leaves in the park, brittle ambience in the air...

All field recording sources were recorded in Autumn ~ Winter 2008.
I made acoustic sounds using instruments like a glass-harp, handbell, glockenspiel, pianica, harmonica, guitar, ice, fallen leaves and mixed electronic, warm, subtle tones..

I hope that you can see your winter in this album..


CDR Edition of 200

Tracklisting

01. Snow Piles
02. Winter Came Again
03. Fallen
04. Bottom of Bottle
05. Above The Winter Oaks
06. Snow Piles (remixed by My Fun)
07. Winter Came Again (remixed by offthesky)
08. Fallen (remixed by The Green Kingdom)
09. Grund (Bottom of Bottle) (remixed by steinbrüchel)
10. Wild Owls (Above The Winter Oaks) (remixed by Billy Gomberg)

Pawn is a music project by Hideki Umezawa (b.1986) based in Tokyo now. He has releases on Dynamophone, Symbolic Interaction.