Review:
American ambient composer Deru returns on Los Angeles imprint Friend Of Friends to present one of his most personal works yet. His new project, Torn In Two, zooms out and deals with human existence as a whole. It finds feelings of frustration, dissociation and anger, but from a high vantage that affords perspective and allows the project to include acceptance, beauty and tranquility. Described as a multimedia project, Torn In Two includes a series of accompanying greyscale films: for the haunting title track and the evocative "Refuge" that magnify the project's themes, with effigies that absorb and reflect the human condition.
Review:
Albums don't get more personal than The Fifty Eleven Project. Penned by Kasper Bjorke together with three of his friends - hence the quartet name - it's a musical soundtrack to his cancer diagnosis in 2011, followed by his treatment and recovery. While the Danish producer has said that it follows emotions both 'light and dark', it also contains moments where his fear of relapse surfaces. "Line of Life (Prologue)" and "Seminom Non Seminom" presumably represent the more positive side of Bjorke's journey, thanks to their beautiful strings and fragile synth lines. There are other, more brooding, tense pieces like "11" - possibly a reference to the year of his diagnosis - but in the main this is a celebration of life in the truest sense.
