Few musical entities, not just bands, challenge as eagerly and effortlessly as Denmark’s Efterklang.
Though scaled down to the core trio of Casper Clausen, Mads Brauer and Rasmus Stolberg for the new release, there is nothing scaled down about the compositions found on Piramida.
While much of their past work can be considered experimental ambient music, with large orchestral strokes, their fourth studio album finds them fusing their classically trained skills with more contemporary elements to create multi-layered, dense pop music.
Opener ‘Hollow Mountain’ is a very busy track but never sounds it, with string flourishes, electric organ and reverberated vocals all sitting together perfectly.
For those familiar with their past efforts, ‘The Living Layer‘ will be a welcome addition with its minimalist yet cinematic production, as vocalist Casper Clausen is enveloped in a wave of increasingly tense strings and synth.
As serviceable as Clausen is as a singer, the album certainly misses the addition of female vocals which helped add depth and variation to previous epics like ‘Swarming’, from 2004’s Tripper.
In their effort to enter the pop realm Efterklang also meander into Bon Iver-style territory, engaging in some of his more sentimental heartstring tugging instincts.
While efforts such as ‘Dreams Today’ may divide some, you can’t blame the group for wanting to expand on their sound. The hard hitting double whammy of ‘The Ghost’ and ‘Black Summer’ wakes Piramida out of its slumber and rounds the album out nicely.
As the sound and career of Efterklang takes another turn it’ll be interesting to see where they go next.
