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OAKE - Auferstehung

Name: OAKE - Auferstehung
Item: OAKE - Auferstehung
Author: Tony Naylor

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OAKE's music is easily placed on the experimental axis formed by Downwards and Blackest Ever Black.The Berlin duo's music proceeds with the same funereal elegance as Raime's and, like Kerridge, who collaborates with OAKE's Eric Goldstein as UF, it swarms with plunging basslines born at a point where jungle, dubstep and drone collide. But OAKE are nonetheless a distinctive presence. Auferstehung ("resurrection") often sounds like a contemporary classical ensemble scraping and thwacking its way through a score. OAKE are working in an industrial lineage, but their music also recalls the ethereal beauty of Cocteau Twins or Julee Cruise's work for David Lynch. Band-member Konstanze Bathseba Zippora's otherworldly vocals on "Viertes Buch: Mortre Wrid" or "Fuenftes Buch: Dreloi Wechd" make that link explicit, but it's also clear in OAKE's general preference for soft power over outright brutality. Their seismic beats and sounds often come blanketed in foggy ambience, and they repeatedly deploy enigmatic, half-buried melodies to brilliant effect. The result is a dense, atmospheric album of real cinematic tension, one that leaves you painting the scenery in your mind. At times it sounds grand and mysterious, at others it evokes a pagan funeral on a windswept cliff. Yes, it is sombre. Yes, it is noisy. But Auferstehung is also rich and rewarding.
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