Lower Than Lo-fi, but Higher

“Lower Than Lo-Fi, But Higher”? It must be the most cryptic, ambivalent and ambiguous name for a band project. The man behind the mysterious name is Christian Stouff, and usually he is to be found behind the bass guitar in the Balkan psychedelic band, Now We’ve got Members. Now he releases the album “No Need for Ladders” on his own, and it is equivalent to the the counterpart of the maximalism  Now We’ve got Members have gradually become known for.

What hits you at first is not necessarily that the sound is lower than lo-fi, or extremely hi-fi for that matter. No, it’s how stripped down it all sounds. The core of the music is Stouff’s voice and a guitar with only four strings. The sound expands now and then with a drum roll, modest fiddles and wind instruments, but always only as a sub-section of the vocal melodies. And the melodies are always beautiful and sore. But never obvious. The songs are often given an unexpected melodic or rhythmic twist, but always in a discreet manner, so that the song can float on and slide thorough and past the soundscape.

When you look through the track list of “No Need for Ladders” you will find a collection of rather ordinary and prosaic words. Titles like “Sand”, “Words” and “Reign” silently screams at the listener in all its dramatic modesty. The lyrics are melancholic and wistful, but not in an overstated or sentimental way. One gets the feeling that it’s all about interaction and how things relate to each other. If it’s in case of atomic, subliminal, pan-dimenesional or human relations is not known.

Lower Than Lo-fi, But Higher proves on the album “No Need for Ladders” that he masters a strange form of pop minimalism that few others, if any, experiment with. Like the name of the music it’s cryptic and ambivalent, but if you get under the skin of it, it’s just as generous as it is withdrawn.

Downloads

No need for ladders – I couldn’t be there [MP3] [OGG]
No need for ladders – Words [MP3] [OGG]