Browse by Artist: SWOD

Artist:	SWOD
Title:	Gehen
Label:	CITY CENTRE OFFICES (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	CCO 021CD

"Translated as 'go', Gehen represents a labour of love from two musicians experienced in the art of seductive and evocative music making. Having first worked together producing live soundtracks to silent movies, Oliver and Stephan tread a delicate board of crystalline piano cascades and the sort of subtle electronic tinkering you can barely recognise or absorb in one sitting. It's fitting that the pair are so used to tailor-making their harmonious shards of sound to moving imagery, Gehen evokes a plethora of half forgotten films and life experiences offered up in glimpses in the back of your mind. If you can imagine a sitting specially programmed by film directors Théo Angelopoulos or Krzysztof Kieslowski, or the music of Eric Satie, Ryuchi Sakamoto or Keith Jarret's 'Köln Concert', you'll have some idea of what to expect."

Artist:	SWOD
Title:	Sekunden
Label:	CITY CENTRE OFFICES (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	CCO 041CD

This is the second full-length release by Swod (Oliver Doerell & Stephan Wöhrmann), following 2004's highly-acclaimed Gehen album. If there's been one positive trend emerging from the ruins of what used to be called electronica for the last couple of years, it has been the comeback of acoustic instruments, especially the piano. Swod, without a doubt, are among the founding fathers of this new, almost neoclassical approach and the success of their debut only proved them right. Sekunden is more than a simple follow-up, more than what bands just do... keep on recording and eventually coming up with a second album, even though it is made of the same ingredients: Wöhrmann's piano and drums, Doerell's guitar, bass and electronics. And yet Sekunden is bigger than even the band's die-hard fans could have hoped for. The melodies are catchier, the bass is tighter, the electronics catch the general mood of the tracks even better and the drums, in all their subtlety, are funkier. On tracks like "Ja" or "Belgien," the voice of a long-dead cinema icon perfectly sets the mood, "Deer" feels like a long-awaited breeze in the blistering heat, "Sekunden" brings back dreamy memories of the long-gone ambient tradition of the late '70s, "Insects" kindly disturbs the listener with its delicate mixture of field-recordings, warm synth patterns and almost sequenced piano and "Patinage," in all its speed and glory, lets all Swod is famous for culminate in an endless loop of beauty. Then the piano fades and all one can do is to start from the beginning.

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