Peter Benisch - Soundtrack Saga
My first exposure to Sweden's Peter Benisch was his Waiting for Snow album on Germany's FAX label. For a lot of us FAX-heads, Waiting for Snow was a left-field surprise, a stunningly sublime album by a guy no one had heard of. And the album title perfectly summed the impressions left on us: a cold, crisp winter exhalation that left us stunned and alert, and the continuing state of anticipation that this release left in us for more.
Well, it has taken a few years and Peter has only gotten better at melding titles to his work. Canada's Turbo Records should be exceedingly proud to bring to North American Peter's latest opus, Soundtrack Saga, which -- not surprisingly -- is both: a soaring soundtrack to an exploration to the top of the world, infused with echoes and melodies that will quickly live up to the "saga" appellation.
Now I'm not getting all gooey because I've been waiting and talking about the arrival of this album for three years and just don't want to look like an idiot because it doesn't live up to the hype and anticipation that I've placed on it. No, I want to go all soft for this disc because it surpasses my expectations. How often do you get what you ask for and then more?
"Skymning" begins with a Casio drum beat, a quaint, nostalgic, analog beat that immediately sets the tone: this isn't going to be an hour of DSP-wankery or IDM-fractured melodies. Benisch is out to produce a classic ambient-but not too ambient-house-but not too house-record. Having been classically trained since the age of nine, Peter's work is suffused with rich melodies, lush environments that speak of green spaces. The cover image of a couple walking across an ice field has been so bleached by the sunlight that the only thing which settles in your retinas is the pale green still left in the sky. Benisch definitely takes us into Biosphere's arctic territory with his beats and sonics, but this is the arctic tundra in the spring. The permafrost is melting and there is water beneath the crusted surfaces-unfrozen, moving water. "The Wireframe Fields" are permeated by this sense of motion beneath the surface, the beats continually pulsing beneath the soaring melodies and string flourishes. The cinematic sweep of "Temple of Opposites" is a definite candidate for incidental music in the next James Bond film. Even the "Love Theme" is delicately handled with its inclusion of drifting vocals by Emma Holmgren.
Soundtrack Saga is at the top of my list for 2001 and in hearty consideration for inclusion in the group of discs that I want to be buried with. More than just an ambient album, Soundtrack Saga is filled with overwhelming cinematic sweeps and melodies. There's a new genre here -- "lushbient" -- and this record is the standard which others will have to equal.
Peter Benisch
Turbo Records [2001]
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