Review - Âme - Rej

Âme - Rej - Sonar Kollektiv

It’s hard not to feel endeared by these guys’ patent respect and reverence for the influences which they seem to engagingly wear on their sleeves. The flip side of ‘Rej’ contains the gauchely named ‘Basic Track’. It’s almost virtually a re-make of the notoriously empty B side ‘song’ on ‘Trak II’ by Phylyps. Naturally, that pretty much dovetails with ‘Basic Track’. (You can find a similar remake-based tool in ‘Life Changes’ on the debut CD, if you already own ‘Super’ by Morgan Geist, that is.)
It’s not so straightforward to peg the title track here - aside from the bass line, which I think I heard first in ‘Dem Young Sconies’ : as ever though, may he who ripped first, from whichever primary source, be the first to get stoned… Like all Kristian Beyer and Frank Wierdermann productions (the ones which I’ve heard anyway) ‘Rej’ is a tightly constructed and pristine-in-all-the-right-places, medium-paced and dreamy jaunt. There’s nothing of anything to dislike amongst the pizzicato lead pattern, brushy hats and majestic progression. As you might suspect with a self-titled CD LP behind them already, Ame are not solely utilitarian craftsmen. ‘Rej’, like some of the songs on that CD, is also a song for a living room, albeit for a living room in a house with ‘deep’ foundations. For the moment it seems Âme are happier to acknowledge the recent features of that house, rather than try to build something fresh-sounding on them. So far though, this is no problem at all, to my ears.

Ken Odeluga