HYDRUS - postcards

(free mp3 EP, narrominded)

Narrominded releases five tracks of glistering, soothing and painstakingly arranged electronica by the duo of Herman Wilken and Almer Lücke as a free download on www.narrominded.com as an appetizer to their first full length album “Interleaves” scheduled for later on this year. If this sentence, neatly packing up the whole necessary information, would have been all there is to this release, then I would have put it into the starving Cracked-news section. But “postcards” has so much to offer it is way more than another information tidbit or minor electronica release out there. It is true, there are a lot of netlabels out there and there are some really great releases amongst the mass of free mp3 releases, but both are hard to find amidst the mass of trite and generic ambient, electronica and minimal house or whatnot. What sets “postcards” apart from these, asides the fact that narrominded is a fully fledged record label that has downloads, free downloads, CDs and even some vinyl albums on its catalogue, is the ability and know how of Wilken and Lücke.

They set down some tracks that are intricate in their simplicity and fascinating in the richness of details. Moreover they are polished to perfection without losing human warmth and empathy. Atmospheric spheres of warm synths are layered over diverse kinds of beats that range from laid back break beats to almost inaudible pods and pans. This, of course, is nothing breathtakingly new or something that will excite the masses on the dancefloors and in the offices of music journals and magazines, but as history has proven to us: the most exciting records in retrospect are a lot of times these that went under the rader the first time around. Examples are plenty.

Hydrus, in this configuration, draw a direct line to some electronica that hasn’t received too much attention as well in the last years. This is a result from the not fish / not meat sound, that, as I said, is not up for the journalists and not up for the dancefloors as well. Like the kid standing in the back of the room, waiting to be discovered and knowing that it has all the talent in it and the charisma and character to show them all, what it is, but never sees dreams come to live, because the starmakers and people looking for new and great personaes always get distracted by the flashy, bragging, loud and dressed up kids that crowd the front and produce all kinds of action to receive attention. I can feel with that kid in the back and I always try to leave the dressed up kids everybody talks about as they are and scan the room for who else is around. Sometimes those kids in the back deserve their place, but more often than not they deliver something unique and original, that attention seekers never have, because they are too concerned with what the watchers want to see and not with that they want to convey.