Here's another various artists compilation from Sweden's AUT issued as, from what I can gather, an edition of sixty-one cassettes, so any recommendation I might make about you rushing out and buying one will be redundant by the time you read this. I've already seen one going for twenty-five bucks over on Discogs. We're therefore in the territory of I've heard this one but you haven't, so apologies in advance.
The shame of it is that A Cold Smell may even be their best release yet, at least of those I've heard. Contributors include the mighty Lars Larsson, Dom Goda Djuren, the Woodpeckerz, BJ Nilsen (who some may recall from collaborations with Z'ev and Chris Watson), and a whole host of persons unknown to me. Additional confusion has arisen from my inability to say for sure quite who is responsible for which track. There seem to be more tracks on the first side than are credited on the cover, and, for example, I thought I was enjoying Kroppen's Delvis Definitivt when it mumbled something about a Marlboro Man, which is actually the title of the one which follows and which is by Facit & Felicia Lindgren, so who knows?
Well, maybe it doesn't matter because the whole thing is good from start to finish, and the tracks are sequenced in such a way as to make for a thoroughly satisfying whole. There's a lot of variety here, although there's a sort of logic following one track leading into the next which, for some reason, actually reminds me of listening to Gristle's Second Annual Report for the first time. It's not that you would be necessarily justified in calling this an old school industrial compilation, but there's a shared aesthetic here and at least a few bits of technology taken from roughly the same shelf. Assuming Maskin's Att Ge Bort Blommor is the thing I'm thinking of as the first track, we open with a wonderfully pensive bit of lo-fi for primitive drum machine and brooding bass, possibly actually two basses, which makes me think of Suicide for a much colder climate. This segues into something completely different which nevertheless makes perfect sense as the next track, and so on and so forth with contributions alternating between hypnotic post-krautrock, noise, neoDada sound collage, and all sorts. The whole adds up to something greater than just disparate bits of music jammed together, something like the soundtrack for an imagined film, and very musical but not always by means you might expect.
...and good luck finding a copy. Sorry. If nothing else comes from this review, all I can say is that it might be wise to keep one's eye peeled on what's been coming from this label so as to avoid disappointment next time.
Yeah it was two basses. Glad you like it!
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