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Dusted Reviews
Artist: Boris Hauf Album: Soft Left onto Westland Label: Mosz Review date: May. 17, 2005 |
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Boris Hauf is an English saxophonist, currently based in Berlin, who is best known for his membership of Austrian outfit Efzeg. Soft Left onto Westland is a disc of solo electronic music that is in tune with the vaguely formalist, pop-flecked abstraction typical of recordings by Hauf’s peers Radian and Martin Siewert. Like Siewert’s patchy ‘pop’ record for Mosz, No Need to be Lonesome, Hauf’s engagement in the chosen field can seem slightly dilettantish, the ubiquitous electronica side project, another disc of lovely, but unnecessary, laptop dabbling.
Soft Left onto Westland is a puzzle. There’s nothing that stands out, except maybe for the warped and modulating orchestral sample at the start of "Annie’s Little Tin Devils," which sounds like it was culled from some Sturm und Drang 'ardkore blast. (For those of ‘tender proclivities,' don’t worry - it soon resolves to slippery, subtracted digi-dub.) Hauf, however, is blessed with both a fine ear for texture and juxtaposition, and a light-as-a-feather fingerprint. Most of the pieces on Soft Left onto Westland are slight figures, with Hauf utilising a few simple elements. Even when he explores longer durations, as on the ambient sprawl of "Put the Man Back in Romance," Hauf displays an admirable economy of means. Though it sometimes meanders, and the occasional piece flits past without distinguishing itself, there is something quite prepossessing about Soft Left onto Westland. It is a lovely slip of a record.
By Jon Dale
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