Slaraffenland – Sunshine EP

We’re hardly shocked anymore by soundscapes that pair acoustics with electronics, man with machine. The synthetic wash of a laptop or delay pedal can easily enclose and support those aspects of a composition subject to individual “chops,” conventionally framed improvisation, or merely the tonal decay of notes produced by the hands or lungs: these copulas don’t jar the senses in 2009 as they might have in Brian Eno’s youth, and exchange across the digital divide seems less struggle than symbiosis.

Slaraffenland — “land of milk and honey” in Danish — has labored in the alleys of Copenhagen to balance this equation, and this EP doesn’t conceal but reveal the creative process as so many iterations of the (anti-)humanist aesthetic. At every juncture, we sense a deliberate dialogue: the specter of circuitry is repeatedly attenuated by consciously “earthy” woodwind passages, precious guitar leads by woolly gang vocals yanked from context. The juxtapositions aren’t always subtle, but they’re consistent: the boys are bent on probing the contours of this opposition, if less committed to breaking it down.

The first track, declaratively titled “I’m a Machine,” is a fitting entrée to the Slaraffenland logos. Clockwork percussion underwrites melodies that swirl, dive, amble, and soothe. Handclaps mix their labor with clarinet and, episodically throughout the EP, flute, trombone, saxophone, and melodica — each of the quintet doubling on a wind instrument. Swells and calm transitions organize the denouement; Slaraffenland, like a more gregarious Mice Parade, weaves not-quite-epics at the comfortable intersection of post-rock and more narrative song form.

Then there is the issue of covers. Slaraffenland reinterpret “Paranoid Android” and an a-ha song (guess!), the former track drawn from a recent OK Computer tribute. Without significant reworking, these selections would appear difficult to justify, betraying not merely hubris but profound limitation. No comment on the Radiohead, but they do nice work with a-ha, hatched within the same Scandinavian orbit. The cover neither does violence to the original — see Cap’n Jazz — nor essentially complicates the structure; rather, it applies different textures, loosens the tightly wound melody, and out come the winds.

Slaraffenland’s insistence on a wind section often feels like just that: an insistence. For the most part, though, Sunshine is a pleasant listen, the imperfect seeds of — perhaps — the next big step in our confrontation and fragile peace with the devices that distract us.