shamelessrocks.bandcamp.com/album/lakes-screens

Lakes & Screens
- Fritz Ostermayer (ORF/FM4, Austrian Broadcasting Corporation)

"White, Pink, Brown, those are the three colors of noise, more or less dense agglomerations of frequencies. White Pink Brown is also the name of an electronic music duo based in Vienna, Austria, who have just released their debut Lakes & Screens on cracking avantgarde label Shameless.

A multitude of dub reverberations open up on Lakes & Screens which cannot be narrowed down to the genre of dub, though. No idea how to best tag this release, with tracks ranging from 00:04 to 05:30. Despite all the catchiness and perhaps as a result of the beauty of the songs, there are layers of depth that one doesn't notice right away.

Nothing just accompanies the vocals, structures and sounds are constantly changing and shifting. And because WPB aren't really afraid of much, some moments even sound like reminiscences of those notorious free improv jams of the 1970s; as if this frayed brittleness was the most natural thing in the world - and with WPB it is. With them, beauty arises from how noise and sounds which might be commonly perceived as interference are dealt with, i.e. highly compositional and not as an assertion of supposed radicality.

This precision in the choreography of humming, whirring, crunching, hissing, clanging and melodious harmonies suddenly rising like the sun gives birth to a great dialectic of tension and relaxation, passion and lightness; whereby even in the most beautiful instants a tipping moment is always perceptible: Nothing is certain here.

The noticeable footing in these fragile tableaus are the genuine vocals, the harmonies and melodies akin to the mastery of Robert Wyatt or Mark Hollis. These and the truly complex and layered arrangements together speak a unique language - a language WPB invented themselves. Lakes & Screens by White Pink Brown is a great album and a top contender in my charts this year."