Dub Tractor - Sorry
Toby Frith Sunday, November 29, 2009 at 05:00PM 
DUB TRACTOR - SORRY (City Centre Offices)
Anders Remmer has quietly ploughed his own furrow for over 15 years now, deftly exploring the space between dub, electronics and pop. This is his 3rd album for CCO, 3 years after the well-received “Hideout”.
Copenhagen-based Remmer’s oeuvre consists of lilting, pastoral expanses in pop with chiming guitar and the expertly placed positioning of dub that gives proceedings throughout “Sorry” a strong base. His penchant for hook-laden melodies is obvious from the outset with the ghostly “And You are Back”, and in the album’s title track there is further evidence in amongst the guitar and percussion of a melodic gift that permeates the song-writing to the very end. Remmer doesn’t vary matters much, but there’s no need because he creates an ambience and setting that takes you from in the start.
The dub inflection starts to appear in “It all went wrong”, basslines and reverb being placed with care and attention, and in “Fall in Love like this”, Remmer’s vocals help to give the composition a tense, emotive feel that complements the melodic structure, his production rounding things off with a slightly, distorted edge. That continues with the album’s high point, the angelic “Higher Hopes”, where motorik drums play off against ambiguous sounding guitar and some beautiful vocals. It’s all very much disposable pop, but when you’re faced with such musical innocence, it’s difficult not to get carried away by this journey into a 40 minute world of hook-laden glories.
Remmer’s curt epithets contune with “That won’t Heal by itself”, his breathy voice spacing it out like a softly-spoken mantra over a repetitive guitar loop, but he breaks free from that pattern with a more narrative feel with “I don’t get it anymore”. The album slowly ends with the glorious “A lot of work is done”, complex guitar being processed beautifully, and with the wonderfully mutating “This is Order”, shimmering to a quick climax.
Every track on this album contains a true melodic nugget and key change that that mark out the very best in pop, and it’s hard to not be taken in by Remmer’s playful innocence throughout. Much more so than the rather reluctant strains of “Hideout”, “Sorry” reveals a different, more open Remmer, and although we’re yet to hear him properly open himself up, it’s an album full of emotional richness that yields much reward.
Toby Frith
Reader Comments (1)
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