Songs From The Beehive (studio album)
by Move D & Benjamin Brunn

From Skinny 11/20/2014 22:29

I don't remember why I decided to check this out. I've never been a massive fan of Moufang's stuff, and I certainly had no idea who Benjamin Brunn was at the time. The artwork looks like a bad Four Tet album cover, re-imagined through the eyes of the author of Elmer the Patchwork Elephant. The album title reminds me of that David Sylvian album. I hate bees (not as much as I hate wasps, but they still make me uneasy). I don't care what genre this is. Minimal tech? Maybe. Minimal house? Warmer. Deep house? Perhaps. Dub techno? Not a bad shout. To me, it's a strange mix of all of those things, a warm, fluffy pillow of ambient synth washes atop which sit all your classic deep house elements, taken apart and put back together again to form something more slight, more beautiful, little rumbles of dubby bass here, some whispered, echoing drums pitter-pattering like an April shower on a tin roof. The way it manages to sound so planned, so measured, and yet so spontaneous. This music sounds like the crazy ketamine dreams after a night at the club, except far friendlier, memories of banging beats coming back, tossing and turning to the rhythm of the night. Some acid synth lines come pounding through like Polygon Window minus the sense of early '90s paranoia, feeling sunnier, less weighty, but still as likely to get you on your feet. And then, of course, they dissipate as quickly as they arrived, sinking back into more oceanic synth washes and April shower drums. Keyboard stabs bounce from wall to wall, energetic but never aggressive, like an old friend whose presence at the party puts everybody else at ease. A minimal, dubby deconstruction of deep house? Yes please.