3/24/2012
àrbore & apenino - Animals Are Not Things! (2012)
/Free folk, Dream folk, Musique concrète, New Weird Europe, Psych-folk, New Weird Spain, Freak folk/
Comment: Rafael Romero aka àrbore (guitars), and apenino (ukeleles) are the troubadours from Spain who have dedicated this 14-album to animals who are killed, vivisected, served as clothing, trained/tortured for entertainment and so on for every day. The purpose of the artists is to convince us, the listeners become vegan. Sonically it is a quite austere pursuit chiming organically and seamlessly. More profoundly, thoughtful acoustic guitar chord sequences are mixed up with concrete sounds including the voices of domestic animals. Sometimes àrbore whistles in the middle of dominantly instrumental compositions, changing chords and tonalities or playing on minimally shaped patterns and repetitive explorations. Furthermore, at Ngetal, and Tini Mandarini the duo is inclined to enter into a more obscure psych-folk plot. The general result is bucolic and innocent. In a word, an enjoyable one by any means. By the way, there are up a pair of covers originally created by Bill Callahan, and The Silver Jews.