Nostalgia is a dangerous ingredient.

Use too much of it and music becomes a museum, lovingly dusted but lifeless. Use just enough, however, and memory ceases to be about the past and instead becomes another instrument, capable of playing melodies that never quite existed. Espen Reinertsen understands this distinction remarkably well. "Venus er i håret" is soaked in familiar sounds, yet never settles for mere recollection. It is an album that remembers rather than recreates.

Nearly a decade after "Nattsyntese", the Norwegian composer, saxophonist, vocalist and producer returns to Susanna Wallumrød's SusannaSonata label with a record that quietly expands his already distinctive musical language. Reinertsen has long occupied an unusual position within Norway's adventurous music scene. As a collaborator he has appeared alongside artists as diverse as Jenny Hval, Jennifer Walshe, Toshimaru Nakamura, Christian Wallumrød and many others, moving comfortably between contemporary composition, free improvisation and experimental jazz. His solo work, however, has always followed its own peculiar orbit, one where pop songs behave like dreams and electronic textures seem to possess emotional memory.

Describing "Venus er i håret" simply as avant-pop feels accurate but incomplete.

Its five extended compositions certainly contain songs. They have verses, recurring melodies and lyrics delivered with quiet intimacy. Yet each one gradually mutates into something less predictable. Reinertsen has spoken of his affection for traditional songs that unexpectedly transform into long instrumental passages, "like an animal with different head and body". That image perfectly captures the album's architecture. Familiar forms gently dissolve into drifting instrumental landscapes before quietly finding their way home again.
One immediately notices the electronics.

The press material references vintage gaming consoles, and indeed the synthesizers frequently evoke early home computers and 8-bit sound chips. Fortunately, this never descends into fashionable retro aesthetics. These electronic voices do not exist to remind listeners of childhood afternoons spent staring at CRT monitors. Instead, they function almost psychologically, as sonic representations of memory itself: slightly pixelated, incomplete, emotionally vivid despite their technical simplicity.

It is an inspired choice.

Memory rarely arrives in high definition.

Around these shimmering electronic figures, Reinertsen constructs surprisingly lush arrangements. Flute, bass clarinet, saxophone, trumpet and subtle programming intermingle with Erik Nylander's wonderfully responsive drumming and Eivind Lønning's restrained trumpet work. Rather than creating dramatic contrasts between acoustic and electronic instruments, the trio allows them to dissolve into one another until distinctions become irrelevant.

Nylander's contribution deserves particular praise.

His drumming rarely provides straightforward pulse. Instead, rhythms constantly shift, hesitate and reconfigure themselves, introducing small disruptions that prevent the songs from ever becoming too comfortable. There is movement throughout the album, but it feels dreamlike rather than mechanical, as though each groove were remembering how it used to dance.

Reinertsen's voice may initially surprise listeners more familiar with his work as a saxophonist.

Soft, vulnerable and almost conversational, it carries little of the theatrical flourish often associated with experimental pop. Instead, he sings with remarkable restraint, allowing fragility to become expressive rather than dramatic. His delivery occasionally recalls the emotional openness of Robert Wyatt, though without imitation, while remaining entirely his own. Over repeated listens the voice gradually becomes less a focal point than another carefully integrated texture within the album's unusually rich sonic ecology.

The songs themselves seem deliberately resistant to grand statements.

Reinertsen has suggested that there are no overarching themes beyond whatever listeners choose to discover. Yet recurring images of memory, bodies, oceans and shifting identities quietly accumulate. The remarkable "Muskelminner fra arkanoidepoken" ("Muscle Memories from the Arkanoid Era") perhaps captures the album's emotional core most clearly, intertwining nostalgic electronic timbres with reflections on physical and emotional memory in ways that feel simultaneously playful and deeply melancholic.

It is impossible not to smile at a record capable of making vintage computer sounds feel genuinely moving.

Human beings, after all, possess a curious talent for attaching profound emotions to objects originally designed to produce cheerful beeps while tiny spaceships destroyed geometric shapes.

The closing title track offers perhaps the album's finest synthesis of its many contradictions. What begins as a gentle ballad slowly expands into a luminous instrumental coda where electronics, winds and subtle rhythmic transformations seem to drift beyond the song itself. One senses Reinertsen becoming increasingly interested in atmosphere without abandoning melody, in abstraction without sacrificing intimacy.
Throughout "Venus er i håret", beauty emerges not from perfection but from constant transformation.

Nothing remains static for long. Harmonies bloom unexpectedly before dissolving. Rhythms mutate almost imperceptibly. Familiar sonic references continually acquire new meanings. The album's emotional landscape feels suspended somewhere between waking memory and hypnagogic imagination, where details remain strangely vivid even as their original contexts disappear.

There is also admirable confidence in its pacing.

With only five compositions spread across nearly forty minutes, Reinertsen allows every musical idea sufficient room to unfold organically. Instrumental passages never feel indulgent, nor do vocal sections appear merely transitional. Instead, each piece breathes according to its own internal logic, unconcerned with conventional song duration or commercial efficiency.

Perhaps that is what makes "Venus er i håret" so quietly affecting.

It never insists upon its originality, despite possessing plenty of it.

Instead, Reinertsen simply invites listeners into a deeply personal world where avant-pop, chamber music, folktronica, jazz and dreamlike songwriting coexist without anxiety over categorization. The result is not experimental for its own sake, but exploratory in the truest sense: curious, generous and open-ended.

Venus may indeed be hiding somewhere in the hair.

More importantly, Reinertsen reminds us that sometimes the smallest, strangest sounds carry the longest memories.

Some albums age like fine wine. Others age like a forgotten cheeseburger under the back seat of a tour van. And then there are Electric Six records, which somehow manage to remain exactly as gloriously ridiculous as the day they were conceived. They exist outside the normal laws of musical entropy, trapped in a parallel universe where disco, garage rock, glam, punk, arena hooks and absurdist comedy all signed a legally dubious coexistence agreement.

Originally released in 2007, "I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master" arrived during a particularly prolific period for the Detroit collective. By then, many listeners still associated Electric Six almost exclusively with the twin cultural detonations of "Danger! High Voltage" and "Gay Bar", assuming the band had already played every card in its deck of innuendo, satire and dancefloor mayhem. Instead, Dick Valentine and company quietly continued building one of alternative rock's most consistently entertaining catalogues, releasing albums at a pace that suggested sleep was an optional lifestyle choice.

This remastered edition, finally making its debut on vinyl as an expanded double LP through Metropolis Records, does more than simply polish an old favourite. It reminds us that the record occupied a fascinating position in the band's evolution. The novelty factor that many critics insisted upon had already worn off. What's left is a band remarkably comfortable with its own contradictions.

Electric Six have always been difficult to categorise, largely because they seem determined to sabotage any attempt at doing so. They can sound like a glam-rock revue interrupted by a post-punk DJ, a garage band accidentally wandering into Studio 54, or Devo after spending too much time watching late-night infomercials. Their songs frequently begin as one genre before gleefully abandoning it halfway through, as though stylistic consistency were an embarrassing social convention best ignored.

The title itself feels like performance art disguised as megalomania. It is hilariously overblown, yet oddly revealing. Beneath the comic excess lies a recurring fascination with power, identity, consumer culture and self-mythologising. Valentine's lyrics often resemble the ramblings of a charismatic salesman who's simultaneously trying to recruit you into a cult and sell you discounted household appliances. The joke, however, is usually aimed at the narrator himself.

Musically, the album rarely stays still long enough to become predictable. "It's Showtime!" opens like the curtains rising on a gloriously chaotic cabaret before "Down at McDonellzzz" launches into one of the band's trademark collisions between infectious hooks and deliciously juvenile social commentary. "Dance Pattern" and "Rip It!" continue the momentum with rhythms seemingly engineered for awkward dancing, while "Feed My Fuckin' Habit" compresses reckless energy into barely two minutes without ever feeling rushed.

Elsewhere, "When I Get To The Green Building" reveals a surprisingly melodic core beneath the band's perpetual smirk, hinting that Electric Six could probably write straightforward radio-friendly rock if they weren't having far too much fun derailing expectations. "Dirty Looks" closes the original sequence on an unexpectedly triumphant note, its expansive arrangement demonstrating that beneath all the jokes lies a band with an instinctive understanding of dynamics and structure.

That has always been Electric Six's secret weapon. It is easy to laugh with them. It is much harder to notice how carefully these songs are assembled. The humour works because the musicianship never feels disposable. The grooves genuinely groove, the riffs remain satisfyingly sharp, and Valentine's theatrical vocal delivery possesses impeccable comic timing without sacrificing musicality.

The bonus material adds welcome perspective rather than functioning as mere archival filler. The cover of Harry Nilsson's "One" transforms melancholic introspection into something rougher and more muscular without completely abandoning the song's loneliness. It illustrates one of the band's recurring talents: appropriating familiar material while making it sound unmistakably like an Electric Six performance rather than a respectful museum exhibit. The demos and remix similarly offer enjoyable glimpses into the creative machinery without diminishing the polished absurdity of the finished record.

The remaster itself avoids the common temptation of confusing loudness with improvement. Instead, instruments enjoy greater separation, bass lines carry more physical weight, and the layered guitars breathe with renewed clarity. The result preserves the album's raw exuberance while allowing its surprisingly intricate arrangements to emerge more naturally.

Nearly two decades later, "I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master" feels less like a relic and more like evidence that irony and sincerity never needed to be sworn enemies. Electric Six understand that humour ages best when built upon genuine craftsmanship rather than disposable punchlines. Their music laughs at rock's inflated ego while simultaneously embracing every glorious excess the genre has to offer.

Perhaps that explains why this album continues to resonate. In an era increasingly obsessed with carefully curated authenticity, Electric Six remain magnificently artificial, cartoonishly excessive and joyfully impossible to pin down. They remind us that intelligence need not wear a serious face, and that sometimes the quickest route to saying something truthful is through a joke delivered at full volume under a mirror ball.

Not every band can make disco-punk sound like both a party and an existential crisis. Electric Six have been doing exactly that for three decades, and judging by this vibrant remaster, they still haven't exhausted the wonderfully absurd possibilities of the formula. Some restrictions, thankfully, were never meant to survive.

Some records introduce themselves politely. [KAAARST] kicks the door with the body of a bass guitar, then apologizes by humming a strangely beautiful melody. Humanity, as usual, is perfectly capable of making elegance out of blunt force.

French bassist Antoine Ferris has been an active presence in Toulouse's adventurous improvised music scene through projects such as Baraque à Free, Megacoaster, Feràmia and Totun, developing a vocabulary that treats the electric bass as anything but a conventional low-end instrument. Across those ensembles, and through collaborations with composers and improvisers, he has cultivated an approach where electronics, hip-hop production aesthetics, noise, and free improvisation are not competing languages but different dialects of the same conversation. [KAAARST], his first solo statement, feels less like a debut than the moment when years of accumulated experiments finally found a coherent gravitational centre.

Calling this a bass album would be technically correct in the same way calling a volcano "warm geology" would also be technically correct. Ferris continuously dismantles the identity of his instrument. Strings become percussion, feedback becomes melody, contact microphones amplify microscopic gestures, effects pedals generate unstable rhythmic companions that behave almost like stubborn improvisers rather than obedient machines. At times he attacks the instrument with his fists, elsewhere with a butter knife, turning performance into a peculiar choreography where every object seems equally qualified to become a musical tool.

Yet despite all this apparent violence, [KAAARST] never settles for noise as spectacle. The abrasive textures are consistently shadowed by melancholy. There is an emotional hesitation beneath the distortion, as though every burst of sonic aggression immediately questions itself. The album lives inside that contradiction, finding tenderness in abrasion and vulnerability inside mechanical repetition.

The sequencing reinforces this fragmented emotional geography. The miniature opener "crush" barely has time to introduce itself before dissolving, while "strange party" assembles fractured grooves from unstable rhythmic cells that flirt with electronic music without ever surrendering to predictable structures. Pieces like "hount orbe" and "coume sourde" stretch improvisation into something almost geological, allowing feedback and resonance to evolve with patient inevitability. Even the provocatively titled "electronic dance music" seems to smile ironically at genre expectations: if anyone arrives expecting club anthems, they may discover instead that dancing can also happen inside one's nervous system.

Ferris' fascination with electronic production is especially compelling because it never attempts to disguise the physicality of performance. Sampling techniques borrowed from beat-making coexist with unmistakably tactile instrumental gestures. Every scrape, strike and accidental resonance preserves the memory of hands touching wood and metal. The electronics do not erase the performer; they magnify the traces of his presence until every imperfection acquires structural importance.

The collaborative moments provide welcome shifts in perspective without interrupting the album's identity. Natacha Kanga's contribution to "shame's coming" introduces a fragile vocal dimension that contrasts beautifully with Ferris' fragmented instrumental language, while Louie Z's Occitan singing on "la nèu" anchors the record in a sense of place and cultural memory. The use of an endangered regional language feels quietly significant: amid all the digital manipulation and sonic deconstruction, an ancient voice appears, reminding us that experimentation does not require abandoning history.

There are echoes throughout the record of artists who have expanded the vocabulary of the electric bass and electroacoustic improvisation, yet Ferris avoids sounding derivative. His references to industrial music, glitch aesthetics, hip-hop production and free improvisation remain ingredients rather than destinations. The album constantly resists becoming too comfortable within any single tradition, preferring instead to occupy the unstable terrain between them.

The title itself suggests rugged landscapes shaped over immense stretches of time, and that metaphor proves surprisingly apt. These pieces often feel eroded rather than constructed. Sounds emerge like exposed mineral layers, revealing hidden colours beneath rough surfaces. Even the shortest tracks function as sedimentary deposits, each preserving tiny sonic fossils that resonate long after they disappear.

For listeners accustomed to clearly defined genres, [KAAARST] may initially resemble an elaborate puzzle whose picture never appears on the box. That is precisely its strength. Ferris trusts curiosity more than certainty, inviting repeated listening rather than immediate comprehension. The album rewards attention to detail: the unstable pulse hiding beneath distortion, the unexpected lyricism surfacing through feedback, the rhythmic intelligence concealed inside apparent chaos.

In an era where software can simulate almost any instrumental gesture with alarming efficiency, Antoine Ferris reminds us that unpredictability remains profoundly human. Sometimes all it takes is a bass guitar, a handful of pedals, questionable kitchen utensils, and the willingness to let accidents become collaborators. The result is an album that feels simultaneously raw and meticulously considered, proving that even broken signals can carry remarkably honest messages.

There are artists who borrow literary titles because they sound impressive, and there are artists who steal them the way tricksters steal crowns: not to imitate kings, but to throw a dance party inside the palace. "Faust III" belongs firmly to the second category. Pilocka Krach invokes Goethe's most famous antihero only to dissolve him into a gleefully unstable theatrical performance where Faust, Gretchen and Mephisto cease to be separate characters and become different masks worn by the same restless spirit.

It is a fitting move for the Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist, whose work has always existed somewhere between club culture, performance art, pop deconstruction and joyful provocation. Music, video, visual art, choreography and theatrical gesture have never functioned as isolated disciplines in her practice. Instead, they constantly leak into one another, making every release feel like a fragment of a larger stage production whose curtain never quite falls.

"Faust III", presented as three acts across nine songs and released as a trilogy of 7-inch records, embraces this dramaturgical logic from beginning to end. Yet despite the conceptual framework, it never becomes weighed down by its own ambitions. If anything, Pilocka Krach seems suspicious of seriousness whenever it starts dressing too elegantly. She slips humour into existential reflection with remarkable ease, reminding us that absurdity and sincerity have always been close relatives.

Musically, the album continues refining the distinctive vocabulary she has developed over the years. Club music, pop songwriting and post-punk angularity coexist inside skeletal arrangements dominated by dark synthesizers, muscular basslines and rhythms that deliberately avoid the obvious punctuation of constant hi-hats. The grooves feel strangely spacious, leaving enough air between beats for irony, melancholy and unexpected emotional turns to sneak inside. It is dance music that seems less interested in commanding bodies than in quietly reprogramming them.

The opening "Hey Party People", featuring noun, immediately establishes this playful ambiguity. Even its title behaves like an unresolved grammatical puzzle. Is it an invitation? A greeting? A sarcastic observation? Pilocka Krach understands that language itself is choreography, each word capable of changing direction depending on where emphasis falls. The track captures that instability beautifully, balancing infectious momentum against a subtle sense of theatrical distance.

"Burning Down The House In The Middle Of The Street" follows with characteristic wit. Despite its apocalyptic title, destruction here feels oddly celebratory, less an endorsement of chaos than an acknowledgment that many established structures have already caught fire on their own. The music responds not with panic but with movement. Humans, after all, possess a remarkable ability to keep dancing while pretending the smoke is part of the lighting design.

The first act concludes with "Der Leichte Wind", featuring the legendary Gudrun Gut. Long recognised as one of Berlin's defining experimental voices through projects such as Malaria! and her pioneering label work, Gut brings quiet gravity to a piece written as a tribute to her late artistic companion Bettina Köster. The result is one of the album's emotional anchors, where memory moves like wind itself: impossible to grasp directly, yet constantly reshaping everything it touches.

The central act shifts toward introspection without sacrificing momentum. "Follow The Feel" proposes emotion not as sentimental refuge but as practical navigation, while "Inferno Paradiso (und dann mal kucken)", featuring Mendrix, delights in collapsing opposites that philosophy has spent centuries trying to keep apart. Paradise and inferno become neighbouring districts separated only by a badly maintained bicycle lane. "Temps Perdu" deepens this reflection, treating lost time not as failure but as material capable of generating unexpected futures.

By the time the final act arrives, the record has accumulated enough emotional tension to justify its release into movement. "All Begin Again" refuses the illusion of definitive endings, suggesting that every conclusion secretly rehearses another beginning. "Spark In The Dark" compresses hope into a remarkably economical gesture before "World On Fire" closes the performance with exhilarating ambiguity. Is everything burning? Freezing? Starting over? Pilocka Krach wisely declines to provide definitive answers. Theatre, unlike politics, occasionally benefits from unresolved endings.

One of the album's greatest strengths lies in its resistance to nostalgia. Although echoes of early industrial pop, Neue Deutsche Welle and post-punk are audible throughout, "Faust III" never behaves like a museum exhibition dedicated to Berlin's underground mythology. Instead, it absorbs those histories into something unmistakably contemporary. Even its handcrafted production, proudly assembled without technological shortcuts, feels less like a rejection of modern tools than an affirmation that personality remains impossible to automate.

The theatrical concept could easily have overshadowed the songs themselves. Instead, it enhances them, providing a loose framework without restricting their spontaneity. Every collaboration contributes meaningfully, every act develops its own emotional climate, and every recurring motif acquires fresh significance as the record progresses.

In the end, "Faust III" offers neither redemption nor damnation. It proposes something considerably more human: that contradiction may be our most reliable companion. We search for certainty, stumble into spectacle, laugh at ourselves, dance anyway, and somehow emerge carrying a small spark through the darkness. Pilocka Krach understands that this is not merely theatre. It is rehearsal for everyday life, only with a considerably better soundtrack.

The title "Not Not Pretending" immediately announces its intentions by refusing to announce anything clearly at all. It is a phrase caught in a hall of mirrors, simultaneously denying and affirming itself, the linguistic equivalent of staring at your own reflection until it begins looking back with independent thoughts. Fittingly, Oonagh Haines' debut album inhabits precisely that territory: a place where sincerity and performance, intimacy and detachment, humour and melancholy continually exchange clothes.

Raised between London and Grand-Fort-Philippe near Dunkirk, Haines arrives at this debut by way of an unusually eclectic artistic path. Before embarking on her solo work, she performed in street bands, experimental pop duos, multimedia projects, and object theatre productions. Her background in visual arts and performance clearly informs the music. These songs do not simply unfold; they stage themselves. Every vocal inflection, every electronic texture, every carefully measured pause feels placed within an imagined scene whose boundaries remain intriguingly blurred.

The album sketches a nocturnal landscape populated by damaged romantics, cosmic drifters, accidental philosophers, and people attempting to navigate emotional vulnerability while maintaining at least a minimum level of irony. Which, admittedly, is one of the more common survival strategies of modern life.

Musically, Haines operates in a compelling intersection of deconstructed synth-pop, minimal wave, spoken-word performance, and experimental electronics. Comparisons to the cool detachment of early post-punk vocalists are understandable, but they only tell part of the story. Beneath the surface restraint lies a surprisingly tender emotional core. The distance is real, but so is the longing.

"Loaded Gun" opens the album with a darkly comic monologue that immediately establishes Haines' peculiar gift for balancing absurdity and discomfort. The song's narrator keeps a weapon by the bed, not for protection but to avoid the horror of social interaction. Beneath the deadpan humour lurks something recognisable: the anxiety of modern existence exaggerated just enough to become funny again. The production mirrors this tension, with electronic textures circling around the vocal like thoughts that refuse to settle.

The brilliant "Perfect Date" pushes this approach even further. A Ford Focus filled with candles, a burning car, declarations of romance delivered amid looming disaster. It plays like a parody of cinematic love stories while somehow remaining strangely romantic. Haines understands that desire is often ridiculous. The best relationships frequently begin with two people pretending not to be absurd while being profoundly absurd together.

Throughout the album, humour functions less as comic relief than as a way of approaching difficult subjects indirectly. "Kindness" appears deceptively simple, almost naïve in its catalogue of hopes for human connection. Yet its straightforwardness becomes radical in a cultural environment increasingly dominated by cynicism. The song quietly suggests that empathy, time, laughter, and affection might still be worthwhile ambitions. Revolutionary material, apparently.

Elsewhere, the record turns increasingly existential. "Dust" transforms natural cycles into a meditation on impermanence, linking bodies to leaves, ash, sand, and light. The imagery remains simple but effective, allowing the song to float between folk-like reflection and dreamlike abstraction. Haines avoids grand declarations. Instead, she observes transience with a mixture of curiosity and acceptance.

"Emptiness" and the two-part "Vacuum" sequence form the album's emotional centre. Here, Haines' detached vocal style becomes particularly effective. Rather than dramatizing absence, she inhabits it. The sparse electronic environments surrounding her voice create a sense of psychological space where memories, identities, and desires drift without clear anchoring points.

The recurring references to light, space, black holes, and cosmic distance might suggest a fascination with science-fiction imagery, but they function more as emotional metaphors. Haines seems less interested in outer space than in the vast interior distances people maintain from one another and from themselves. The vacuum is psychological before it is astronomical.

One of the album's greatest strengths is its handling of repetition. Electronic motifs return in altered forms, phrases echo across tracks, and emotional themes resurface from different angles. This creates a subtle sense of continuity without imposing a rigid narrative. The songs feel connected by atmosphere rather than storyline, as if documenting different rooms within the same dream.

The production deserves particular praise. Mixed by Renaud Carton and mastered by José Guerrero, the record achieves a delicate balance between clarity and ambiguity. The electronic elements never overwhelm the songs, nor do they settle into predictable patterns. Instead, they create shifting environments where Haines' voice can move between character, narrator, and confessor.

The closing "Meet Me" offers one of the album's most beautiful moments. Light becomes both destination and transformation. Identity becomes fluid. Conversation dissolves into smoke. The song leaves many questions unanswered, which feels entirely appropriate. Albums obsessed with certainty tend to age poorly. Albums comfortable with ambiguity often linger.

What makes "Not Not Pretending" particularly impressive as a debut is its confidence in incompleteness. Haines does not attempt to explain herself fully. She leaves gaps, contradictions, and unresolved tensions throughout the record. The result feels remarkably human. After all, most people spend their lives performing versions of themselves while simultaneously hoping someone will see through the performance.
The title turns out to be less paradoxical than it first appears. Haines is pretending, and she is not pretending. She is performing, but the emotions are real. She is detached, but deeply invested. She is ironic, yet sincere.

Like the best contemporary art-pop, "Not Not Pretending" understands that authenticity is rarely a matter of removing masks. More often, it emerges from choosing the right mask and wearing it honestly.

In a world increasingly addicted to declarations, Oonagh Haines offers something rarer: uncertainty rendered with elegance, humour, and considerable grace.