Tape - Milieu (Hapna)

The Stockholm-based trio of multi-instrumentalists – Andreas Berthling, Hapna boss Johan Berthling, and Tomas Hallonsten, all of whom blend their acoustic instruments with tape recordings and computer improvisations – are clearly quite comfortable with genre-crossing. But unlike a lot of contemporary “experimental music,” the genres involved aren’t necessarily free improvisation and new music composition. Instead, this gentle, open-ended music bears the sonic imprint of folk and psychedelic music. The electronics here buzz with the tonal friendliness of some of Jim O’Rourke’s more recent recordings (e.g. a fusion between the acoustic, quasi-Americana of Bad Timing and the burbling glitch-pop of I’m Happy . . . ), but one can certainly also detect the influence of Fennesz and Gastr del Sol. Open acoustic guitar strumming mixes with brass cadences and clawing, scratching electronic eruptions. The brief, almost gnomic tracks are complex despite their relative accessibility; they are much more songlike and a good deal more accessible than the pieces on Tape’s previous disc, Opera. They allude, they gesture, and they intrigue but are marked by a reserve, almost a musical shyness. For example, the sweetly melancholic piano and guitar on “Crippled tree” grow close to wearing their emotions on their sleeves, as it were, but are soon shrouded by a hurdy-gurdy drone or the crackle of feedback. In this tentativeness, I was reminded of a similar effect achieved by Thom Yorke’s voice on Radiohead’s Kid A: desperately shielding or muffling its most enchanting, sensitive qualities. There’s a fragility to Tape, almost as if they’re not sure they actually want to be saying anything, content instead simply to luxuriate in the bed of sounds. At only a half hour, this disc might seem too brief. But this dark-hued lullaby of a record is elliptical and effervescent enough to satisfy.