A slightly different kind of homage to Franz Kafka – more precisely to the writer himself, his fiancée Felice Bauer and his later partner Milena Jesenská. For their new album, Aris Kindt, producers Francis Harris and Gabe Hedrick turned to Kafka’s letters to both women as their conceptual core. It marks their first release on the ambient label Quiet Time. With great delicacy, they weave together electronic and acoustic elements, at times incorporating field recordings such as children’s voices. What emerges is a sound world steeped in longing and melancholy.
The urgency – or perhaps more accurately: the intrusiveness – of Kafka’s correspondence, with which he inundated Felice Bauer to the point that she supposedly asked him to ring her for a change, is far less audible here. Only the occasional electric-guitar textures, if that is indeed what they are, hint at something more forceful. When they appear, they almost engulf everything around them – though such moments are rare.
