Bersarin Quartett Bersarin Quartett

Bersarin Quartett, most likely the product of one and not four people, lays down a pretty heavy dose of downtempo dirges on their/his self-titled release on Lidar.  Lurching classical strings are the first sound heard, eventually inhabited by sparsely paced, mildly glitched downtempo beats, just to carry the listener through.  The same elements are lightly shuffled and repeated throughout the ten tracks of this debut album.

Like much of Portishead's new masterpiece, but on a much more subterranean level, this is a great step away from the lite jazz loungey comfort that absorbed the Bristol sound into something blurry and boring called "trip hop", an effort to strip the powerful sound of the cosy temptations that inundated the sound with fluffy vibes of luxury.

Where Portishead had a massive (and massively exploited) legend to emerge from, Bersarin Quartett is essentially unknown and perhaps intent on staying that way.  Where Portishead has built a whole new sound to aggressively scrape against the apathy of modern music and the mangled manipulation of their first few records, Bersarin strips it down to patient, absolute minimalism.  No pop elitists need consider it.

It won't take off, it will probably drift into the cultural ether as it almost seems designed to.  The melancholy tone of the chamber stark strings plus occasional echoey beat, however, almost tells its own sad story about this inevitable fate.

On a random shuffle with all the other musical detritus, these tracks stick out for their steadfast hold, a downtempo soul cleanser.  As an album, it creates its own spell, provoking an amnesia of unhummable profundity.  The themes will drift in and out of ones head, but almost felt more than heard.

It's a pretty good album taking downtempo in a mature, difficult to exploit direction.  Not that anybody should want to listen to these stark stringscapes all day, but they are a nifty piece of the puzzle.  This record, alas, will not sell.  Ironically, somebody is being hired right now to compose television or film cues that sound a lot like this...with none of the resonance, of course.