Don Niño - In The Backyard Of Your Mind 2012

The last four posts here at "Beyond Musicology and Further..." are just among some interesting albums that I dicovered thanks to my good friend MFP (aka LRR), him and family come to Sintra, which allowed us to meet at last, after 4 years of virtual trade, back and forth emails. Thanks for your visit.

The best way to describe this is folkatronica; the term is a little outmoded now but it’s the closest fit for the picky acoustic guitar, fretful vocals and electronic textures produced by Frenchman Don Niño, a.k.a. Nicolas Laureau, who's now on his fourth record in this guise. Though solo, he’s worked on this album with members of NLF3, Mogwai (Luke Sutherland) and his brother Fabrice Laurent (a.k.a. F.Lor).

This is folk music from the urban jungle, a twisted superstructure of guitars, percussion, harmonium, synths and assorted effects. He hymns the joy of repetition throughout, little phrases looped like mantras as in ‘Everything Collapsed All Right’, while Eno’s ambient efforts come to mind within ‘Cuckoo’’s peaceful dreamworld. Other songs are more meditative and atmospheric, full of slow, hazy susurration where the electronic backing ebbs and flows like a stormy sea on a naked beach. Meanwhile the whizzes, whooshes and tweets of ‘Free Birds’ (a bonus track) subverts the peace of what’s gone before, sounding like the hysterics of a city zoo at feeding time. But if you’re looking for pop content rather than atmospheric soundscapes, the haunting melodic repetitions of ‘Souls In The Parlour’ stick in the mind, as does the beaty rhythms and strange effects of the curiously catchy ‘She’s Resisting’.

It’s a strange one, an old-fashioned patchwork of folky loops and fragments, aspiring to Grizzly Bear maybe, but it’s one for pressing play and lying back without thinking too hard.

listen here

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