Konkylie

Pretty stunning bit of dance pop from the Danish outfit When Saints Go Machine....my review ran at Blurt yesterday.

When Saints Go Machine
Konkylie
(!K7)


A new competitor for the Antony Hegarty Memorial "Most Delicate Falsetto in a Disco Setting" award has emerged from the unlikely environs of Copenhagen. Nikolaj Manuel Vonsild may not be a bird now or ever, but he's got the same quavery vulnerability, the same whispery flamboyance as Hegarty, against the same sleek, strobe-lit dance vibes as Hercules & Love Machine.


Vonsild is the most visible member of Danish four-piece When Saints Go Machine. The new album is named for a conch shell, but put this beach flotsam to your ear and you're more likely to hear shivery synths and percolating electro keyboards than any kind of ocean. Their sound is super clean, super sharp, but with a touch of the mystic. The titular opener takes shape like a lost Talk Talk outtake, Vonsild's voice fluttering in chilled landscapes of electro-tones. Later, "Cut By the Same Scissors" floats right off the dance floor and into epiphany. Its tremolo'd synths and Gnostic verses make a case for human connectivity, even as its drum machines urge the hips to shift. Concluding track "Adds and Ends" is even more spiritually evocative, its friction-y pizzicato string lines dissolving into lush, synthetic vistas, all lost, as Vonsild trills, "in yellow light."

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