DENSELAND - Code & Melody (2024)

Berlin-based trio Denseland with their second release for Arbitrary. "Just because Denseland take inspiration from the past, doesn’t mean they're stuck in it. On their first album since 2017 they instead venture slowly but steadily into unknown territory. Hanno Leichtmann and Hannes Strobl’s dub-infused, bass-heavy rhythmic minimalism in combination with lyricist David Moss’s sonorous yet deadpan delivery opens up a space that feels both claustrophobic and infinitely wide. Like previous Denseland albums, Code & Melody picks up on the sparse side of dub-enamoured post-punk, no wave, post-rock, adventurous electronic and improvised acoustic music and blends this with a vocal performance marked by a Lou Reedian cool, a confrontationalism à la Lydia Lunch and, occasionally, an experimentalism akin to Scott Walker. The result is as unique and ambiguous as the record’s title: Musical formal rigour enters into a dialogue with poetic reflections on the beautiful mess that is the human experience."