KUEDO: Slow Knife       2xLP/CD   Planet Mu

Returning after five years since his debut ‘Severant’, Berlin’s Kuedo, starts where he left off with relative ease.

The beautifully simplistic rhythmic patter of ‘Hourglass’; allows for an emphatic and glorious selection of pads, to lift the listener spirits in a nostalgic array of dips and dives through the aural equivalent of an 80’s city vision of the future.  This is further explored on the ambient interlude of ‘Under the Surface’ and the spacious ‘In Your Sleep’; that allows for obscure vocalisations that fit snugly, when in all fairness, they shouldn’t.

The expansive sounds of the title track have the unique knack of sounding way more complex than they actually are; and it’s this management of production that involves the listener to the point of addiction, where they cannot help but listen on, to see what comes next.

Riddled with harmony, ‘Slow Knife’ as a whole, covers a variety of emotions and raises many a question internally.  Played out as a backdrop to a dystopian world of rain and neon; the only downside is that sometimes things tended to linger on a little too much in the slower areas, where I really wanted the pace to turn up a notch.

As a release in its entirety, this latest body of work does what it sets out to achieve.  With an expansive polished production, there is little more you could ask from the artist, even if it does become a tad tedious in small measures; where you randomly find yourself skipping to the next track.

8.5/10