Recommended by us on 8th December 2011
...according to our Brian on Thu 08 Dec, 2011.
Now Dekorder indulge themselves in a set of bastardised mangled late-'60s/early-'70s easy listening from Andy Pekler which in print sounds atrocious but believe me, this is sounding super interesting!! So in many ways this tapped album comes across more like a cosmic ambient record made by Leyland Kirby then released by Trunk - there's a lot of pitching and backwards masking occurring that makes for a bizarrely alien and disorientating experience that is nevertheless quite soothing in a curious fashion. I couldn't begin to explain how drowsy and whacked-out this mind-altering record is, how a music that was once schmaltzy and whimsical can become so psychotropic and bonged-out. There's real skill in the way Pekler has reactivated and morphed this old music into something quite otherworldly not to mention utterly intoxicating. A real hearty surprise!
Sentimental Favourites is Andrew Pekler's first album for Dekorder and his first solo release since 2009's Entanglements In The Orthopedic Sensorium. As is the case with all of his recordings, the music contained herein is the result of an investigation into an abandoned genre or aesthetic trope of the past. In this case, the object of Pekler's retro-speculative archaeology is a particular strain of late 60's/early 70's easy listening which melded the sophisticated songwriting pathos of Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb or The Carpenters with a post-psychedelic attention to sonic detail and was exemplified by such ensembles as The Mystic Moods Orchestra, 101 Strings, late-period Santo & Johnny and countless one-off albums. On Sentimental Favourites, Andrew Pekler attempts, without irony, to recapture the emotional sweep and sonic grain of these last innocent byways of pop history with his own signature electronic textures, loops and fragments of melody. The individual songs and interludes, ranging in tone from the haunting and pensive to the wistful and breezy, comprise a carefully planned sequence. Enhanced by the sounds of nature between and sometimes during the tracks, the listener is taken through a cycle of mood states which gradually condense over the course of the album into an all-encompassing atmosphere of sentimental reflection. Repeated listening is recommended. 400 LPs
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