Efterklang - V32 Nov/Dec 2004

A long, strange Tripper

With a name that means both "reverberation" and "remembrance" in their native language, Efterklang manage to create a strangely memorable noise on their new record, Tripper. Hailing from Copenhagen, the band make the same sort of shoegazery laptop music so popular with Icelandic groups like Mum and Sigur Ros. The songs on Tripper are all characterized by warm swells of oceanic guitar, shyly androgynous vocals, and subtle electronic rhythms that creep into and out of the songs without ever drawing attention to themselves. It's amazing that a band with ten steady members that sometimes employs an entire Greenlandic choir can make music so restrained and aggressively intimate. While it might not exactly be party music, Efterklang do provide a perfectly evocative soundtrack for your most dramatic personal moments. This is, perhaps, the kind of music your computer might make if it could take handfuls of valium and go for long walks in the park, or the kind of thing you might hear if a tree were to climb into bed with you and whisper sweet nothings in your ear. In other words, its beautiful.

-T. Cole Rachel

Efterklang's Tripper is out now from The Leaf Label.