Koen Holtkamp - Gravity / Bees

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4...according to our Phil on Thu 28 Oct, 2010.

In case you didn't know and I suspect if you're bothering to read this then you do, Koen Holtkamp is one half of experimental sound artists Mountains. Here's his 2nd solo album after his debut on Type. The sleeve is lush... nice thick cardboard with an ace letterpress print pasted onto the front of it so it looks hand-made. It's nice when big(ger) labels Thrill Jockey pay this much attention to the packaging. I guess we're in tricky times with physical sales so you need to do what you can to sell things. Fortunately Koen's music sells itself as it's lovely. Droney synth washes with lots of nice tinkles and noises kicking around in the background. It gets kind of mantra ish in it's kosmischeness.... waves of lovelyness pouring themselves all over your ears. It's more droney than previous releases (i.e. not as much going on) and it's less electro-acoustic sounding but if you're into the new wave of cosmic synth business like Oneohtrix, Emeralds, Expo 70 etc then you'll love this!

• Koen Holtkamp is one half of the duo Mountains. He has released two solo records on his label Apestaartje under the name Aero and in 2008 he released the album ‘Field Rituals’ under his own name on the Type label. ‘Gravity / Bees’ is his first solo release for Thrill Jockey.

• ‘Gravity / Bees’ is a vinyl-only release featuring two side-long tracks and is packaged in an LP jacket with beautiful letter-pressed artwork hand- pasted to the front and back.

• Holtkamp has toured throughout the US and Europe performing everywhere from festivals, art galleries and museums, to basements, communes, churches, and rock clubs. He has performed with Fennesz, Radian, James Blackshaw, Nicholas Collins, Carsten Nicolai, Tony Conrad, Supersilent, and many more.

• Koen is currently working on sound recording for a documentary in Japan and continues to work on solo material as well as a new Mountains album due in 2011 on Thrill Jockey. The last Mountains album ‘Choral’ was a huge success.