Denzel + Huhn: Paraport
City Centre Offices

Long-time CCO contributors and one-time Ornament & Verbrechen members Bertram Denzel and Erik Huhn return after a four-year break with Paraport, their third Denzel + Huhn release on City Centre Offices (preceded by Filet and Time Is A Good Thing). The album's fifteen rich tapestries merge textural micro-detailing and clinical electronic rhythms with warm melodies and analogue instruments. In the opener “Kleiner Bruder,” strings swoop loudly into view over high-pitched pulsations before acoustic guitar picking takes over. Listening to each piece is equivalent to studying agitated organisms under a microscope, and the amount of detail packed into a three-minute track like “Dorian”—burbling keyboard loops, eruptive lava showers, string tones, syncopated percussion rhythms—is remarkable. So thick is its crackle and so deep its dub bass, “Treibel” wouldn't sound out of place on Pole's debut album. Equally evocative, “Targo” layers smeary chords over rapid-fire clicks and a scurrying shuffle while “New Kerwe” arranges gaseous emissions, insistent chords, and hydraulic noises into an orgy of factory machines. Apparently Paraport was recorded over fifteen 2003-2006 sessions with Denzel and Huhn ‘shattering' and reassembling the live material into what we now hear as the album's ultra-vivid miniatures.

January 2007