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Product details
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Track Listings
| 1. Winter Beats |
| 2. Hearts |
| 3. Wired |
| 4. I Kill Your Love, baby! |
| 5. Pulse |
| 6. Cancer |
| 7. Load Your Eyes |
| 8. Empty Bottles |
| 9. No Way Outro |
Product Description
Review
Scandinavian chill-wave (nee nu-gaze) is hardly an undersubscribed genre. It's also one that's a pain to write about, reliant for its power as it is on sonics alone. You can't hear the drowned-out words here, and sense that even if you could they're not important. So do I Break Horses stand apart from the endless torrent of Nordic sound-distorters? Just about. They offer beauty and darkness, elevation and noir, and if they're intent on eschewing personality, they pulse with plenty of presence.
The Stockholm duo - Maria Lindén and Fredrik Balck - operate in unconventional manner at the coalface. Lindén writes the music, Balck the lyrics: but Linden sings them. They seem to agonise over how to keep everything blurred, foggy, pleasingly warped. Genre influences that in 20 years have gone from startling to predictable abound: MBV, Cocteaus, a dash of Mary Chain - you don't need us to recite the list. It's all treated synth-beds, echoing guitars and spurts of crashing volume. It whispers or it shouts. What then, if anything, will win Hearts a place in your heart?
Perhaps the fact that they try so hard. Despite the time-honoured formulae, there's rarely a spell where the duo aren't endeavouring to make magic. They don't always get there, but you admire the stern-faced dedication. I Kill Love, Baby! is intimate, hungry. Cancer (those titles!) begins with a hum of churchy guitars and key stabs, the ennui-laden voice pitched midway between Hope Sandoval and Elizabeth Fraser. Big drums come in: you brace yourself for a blast of Cults' Spector-esque derivations but it never quite happens. The tease is rather attractive. Winter Beats is the wasted skeleton of an upbeat MGMT hit covered in deep, paralysing snow (that's a good thing), while the title-track, segueing directly out of its looping bleeps, surges in with a lick of Vangelis before almost breaking into a bustle of Neu!. Again, it never quite does, and again there's something alluring about that blank-canvas vacancy.
No moulds are broken here, but the occasional breeze drummed up by the couple's galloping minds is in many ways cool.
--Chris Roberts
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Music For A Summer Almost Over,
By
This review is from: Hearts (Audio CD)
Swedish Duo I Break Horses (Maria Linden and Fredrik Balck) haveturned in a good set with 'Hearts', a nine track collection of distinctive synth-pop which, an increasingly cluttered genre notwithstanding, has enough of its own to say to deserve our attention. There is a jumbled intensity in their vision. Mist-shrouded landscapes; dense subterranean beats; half-heard ghostly vocals. Ms Linden's voice is often buried so deep in the mix that the words are obscured but this adds a satisfying sense of mystery and adventure to the proceedings. The quasi-psychedelic noodlings of 'Wired' is a particularly good example. Elsewhere, 'I Kill Love, Baby' demonstrates a greater capacity for restraint. Initially barely breathing, the piece has an affecting hymn-like quality but builds, layer-upon-layer, until Ms Linden's vocal entry gives the arrangement clearer focus and definition. Although little more than a two-chord trick the results are surprisingly uplifting. 'Pulse' and 'Cancer', too,continues the journey into dream-epic territory with their near-orchestral textures. (The latter is arguably the album's finest moment. A very beautiful moment). Final track, 'No Way Outro' , turns its face towards the sun bringing the project to a rousing close with a curious but powerful folsky optimism. As another summer reaches its last burning embers 'Hearts' will find a place in the frosts and fogs of another year's end. Autumnal music indeed. Recommended.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heavenly!!!,
This review is from: Hearts (Audio CD)
Wonderful post-punk style band combining the atmospheric sounds of My Bloody Valentine and the ethereal vocals of the Cocteau Twins.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Synthgazing,
By
This review is from: Hearts (Audio CD)
I can't really disagree with the other review here. Reminded me a bit of Mazzy Star crossed with Maps, which is no bad thing. Great production and arrangements. Recommended for all fans of the synthesiser and distortion.
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