Objects,beings & Parrots

Description

Please keep moving, please don't stop here! Even more than two decades after their formation, Urlaub in Polen continue to celebrate an aesthetic of transience -- an experience bounded by time, poured into the project's very name -- set against a continuous flow of new impressions and a suitcase slowly filling with memorabilia. After a longer hiatus, their 2020 album All marked a return with a warped take on krautrock, a direction which their new release Objects, Beings and Parrots both follows and expands upon. In true eclectic tradition, it ventures further into diverse genre territories -- always exploratory, yet never losing its thread. Multi-instrumentalist Georg Brenner and drummer Jan Philipp Janzen blaze a trail through a dense web of references (see also the cover collage merging tile selections, retro interior suggestions, and archaeology textbook cutouts), evoking a warm feeling of being taken along for the ride -- even as the band refuses to be pinned down to any clear musical category. Take the opener, Abacus: kicking off with a drum machine and subtle guitar flourishes, it already nods -- title included -- to the mechanical, forward-clicking motorik sound of first-generation krautrock. Then it takes a turn, morphing into a grooving jam with increasingly dense sound layers, howling guitars, and the band's signature clipped vocal phrases -- calling to mind flashes of '90s noise rock. Next up on this winding path: a washing machine -- here manifested in layers of wide synth textures, crashing drums, distorted guitars, and vocals that end in a staccato-like cough. It's a shaking, rattling trip through a cosmos of self-willed machinery and a comforting embrace of imperfection. And so the transformation continues: sometimes as wavering retrofuturism (Fame & Fortune), sometimes as surprisingly melodic acoustic pop -- complete with a woodland brass solo (Jaki's Love Time) -- and always through the weaving of finely crafted rhythmic repetitions with sonic experimentation. The Objects, Beings and Parrots in this flow form vague images, points of orientation and pause: at once recognizable elements drawn from pop and art history, and yet as fleeting and abstract as the track that shares their name. You can hear the album's decelerated genesis: after a lengthy writing phase, the tracks were recorded across multiple sessions at the secluded MARS Studio in Germany's Eifel region. The result is a trippy, self-contained celebration of persistence -- of pushing forward, without excluding moments of stillness, and with the occasional glance in the rear-view mirror. Tracklisting A1 Abacus A2 Washing Machine A3 Opposite Day A4 Fame & Fortune B1 Face Of Reason B2 Objects, Beings & Parrots B3 Jaki's Love Time B4 Moonwalk B5 Yours

Description

Please keep moving, please don't stop here! Even more than two decades after their formation, Urlaub in Polen continue to celebrate an aesthetic of transience -- an experience bounded by time, poured into the project's very name -- set against a continuous flow of new impressions and a suitcase slowly filling with memorabilia. After a longer hiatus, their 2020 album All marked a return with a warped take on krautrock, a direction which their new release Objects, Beings and Parrots both follows and expands upon. In true eclectic tradition, it ventures further into diverse genre territories -- always exploratory, yet never losing its thread. Multi-instrumentalist Georg Brenner and drummer Jan Philipp Janzen blaze a trail through a dense web of references (see also the cover collage merging tile selections, retro interior suggestions, and archaeology textbook cutouts), evoking a warm feeling of being taken along for the ride -- even as the band refuses to be pinned down to any clear musical category. Take the opener, Abacus: kicking off with a drum machine and subtle guitar flourishes, it already nods -- title included -- to the mechanical, forward-clicking motorik sound of first-generation krautrock. Then it takes a turn, morphing into a grooving jam with increasingly dense sound layers, howling guitars, and the band's signature clipped vocal phrases -- calling to mind flashes of '90s noise rock. Next up on this winding path: a washing machine -- here manifested in layers of wide synth textures, crashing drums, distorted guitars, and vocals that end in a staccato-like cough. It's a shaking, rattling trip through a cosmos of self-willed machinery and a comforting embrace of imperfection. And so the transformation continues: sometimes as wavering retrofuturism (Fame & Fortune), sometimes as surprisingly melodic acoustic pop -- complete with a woodland brass solo (Jaki's Love Time) -- and always through the weaving of finely crafted rhythmic repetitions with sonic experimentation. The Objects, Beings and Parrots in this flow form vague images, points of orientation and pause: at once recognizable elements drawn from pop and art history, and yet as fleeting and abstract as the track that shares their name. You can hear the album's decelerated genesis: after a lengthy writing phase, the tracks were recorded across multiple sessions at the secluded MARS Studio in Germany's Eifel region. The result is a trippy, self-contained celebration of persistence -- of pushing forward, without excluding moments of stillness, and with the occasional glance in the rear-view mirror. Tracklisting A1 Abacus A2 Washing Machine A3 Opposite Day A4 Fame & Fortune B1 Face Of Reason B2 Objects, Beings & Parrots B3 Jaki's Love Time B4 Moonwalk B5 Yours