UMOR REX

S ND Y  P RL  RS (or less hermetically, Sunday Parlours–Berlin) projects a vaporous, indeterminate soundscape inside the black resonance chamber that is Rex. Neither noise, loosely anchored in barely sketched, skeletal song structures, nor conventional guitar and voice songs, mystified and buried underneath thick blankets of stylized feedback, Rex exists and slowly drifts in a very peculiar region of sound and intent. The listener is invited to drift accordingly, to patiently adapt his or her senses to the tenuous light and rarified air, and to gradually discern melody, form and emotion from what at first may appear to be a distant mass of black billowing clouds. Yet, as vaporous and indeterminate as this rocking haze may seem, it has all in fact been filtered, layered and grown with method and care.  These protracted rivers of sound-dust in which the sun splinters and hums have been shaped by Malte Cornelius Jantzen, who rewards the silent concentration of the listener with subtle and nuanced songwriting. These are songs, no doubt about it, and they wait there for the listener to catch and discern them. Rex will not pummel you into obedience, or force anything down your throat; there are no instructions on how-to-listen properly. Rex bets, humbly and without self-assertion, that the deep mood and enveloping flow of these tunes will carry you away. And you’ll be together, for a while, you and the deep, lonely sound, melting into each other in the quiet darkness. And the melody will project a very distinct and powerful shadow inside you. And it will feel, perhaps, like a profoundly familiar thing, and also, profoundly strange and unknown. And if it all works, and this album speaks to you (and you feel your own shadow stretching inside its resonance chamber) you will know, for sure, for a fact, that this, this, is something special.