Buzzin Electronic Music

Brael – new Mobeer release – review

Brael

Brael is Steve Dannemiller and Joachim Hero. They are an ambient, electronic, experimental group who come from Connecticut.

They have already released one record in collaboration with the group Tokyo Bloodworm, which was entitled Living Language. They are now taking this as the basis for their new Mobeer record through Moteer.

Having experienced success with the Living Language – Brael were album of the week on Boomkat and had ‘Morning of the World’ played on Radio 1 by Mary-Anne Hobbes – the new Mobeer release features two of the Brael solo songs from that record reworked and extended into more full, epic pieces.

These are the aforementioned ‘Morning of the World’ (in its new form on the Mobeer release as ‘Morning’) and ‘Magic Wand’ (‘Magic’).

The fourth track was also on Living Language, but here appears in its original form, and almost unrecognisable. Other tracks come from the past two years that longtime friends Steve Dannemiller and Joachim Hero have produced together.

The album opens with ‘Morning’, a slow starter, which begins in a minimalist style (the sounds are later echoed in pleasing circularity on the album closer ‘Ocean’), before expanding into a Four Tet like downtempo rhythm made from crisp-as-they-come hi-hats and echoey snares. The sounds over the top are melodic, but more ethereal than Four Tet’s earthly sounds, and this sets the tone for the rest of the album.

Brael really work the creamy sounds of sliding guitars and synths, blending them into pieces of very relaxed electronica, as is the case on ‘Magic’. The warm, ambient sound of their work is also apparent on tracks like ‘Northern Trees’, which along with ‘Guanopolis’ form the most experimental pieces of music at the end of this album. This break from the recognisable (Brael have a lot of affinity with Boards of Canada) is when Brael are at their best, creating really interesting, engaging, innovative and ambiguous pieces of ambient electronica.

The album comes in hand-made packaging, limited to 300 copies. You can order it from Boomkat, Norman Records, and Small Fish.

Visit their MySpace to find out what it’s all about.