SusAnne Brokesch So Easy Hard to Practice
This New York-based Austrian native’s second album on German imprint Disko B is an ambitious […]
This New York-based Austrian native’s second album on German imprint Disko B is an ambitious tapestry of classical music influences fused with ambient, techno and house touches. So Easy… is temperamental, swooping and dipping from one sonic mood to another. The opening track contrasts Brokesch’s own voice uttering sounds and words with a grand backdrop of sampled and processed music by Franz Schubert. After this dramatic opening, things become even more bi-polar. “Bel Air Mix 1” sees lush keyboard textures pushing against sci-fi type synths, sweeping electronic strings and a pulse of bass. So Easy… unfolds again with the strangely joyous tones of “Mobile Data Shred On Nightshift,” which incorporates a touch of Satie’s “Trois Gymnopedies” in the understated strings that emerge and disappear throughout the track, buried in and released from sharp synth tones and the virtual plucking of large echoing strings. In “Consequence,” Brokesch unleashes a distorted house groove that sounds as if it’s about to drift away on radio interference. “Dancing,” a marathon psychedelic deep house track, finishes out a compelling album that offers a tiny universe of sound unraveling slowly with each listen, pulling you into a realm of feminine beauty that’s slung, perhaps paradoxically, on a muscular and metallic framework of dense, undulating textures that dare you to describe them.