Dusted Reviews Artist: Lawrence Album: Lowlights From the Past and Future Label: Mule Electronic Review date: Sep. 11, 2007

Turn the lights down low, if you please: Lawrence is in the house. It’s been years since I swooned wholeheartedly for Peter Kersten’s lambent, wilting, gorgeously sad house productions, years since my first encounter with the chiaroscuro flickers of The Absence of Blight, one of the most compellingly tender electronic music albums of the past half decade. Kersten keeps slipping under the radar, but who would have it any other way? He’s a wallflower with style, a scientist of sob, an after-hours lover, quietly brooding in the corner.

Lowlights from the Past and Future collects singles, offcuts and remixes. If you’ve ever heard Kersten’s music before, you’ll know what to expect: ghost chimes; soft purrs; grayscale rasps and sighs, and soft, pulsing beats entwining with melodies that wax and wane like a candle’s flickering flame. You’ll know a few of these songs from Kersten’s albums - of particular note is Blight’s “If You Can’t Understand,” whose prater-wheel phrases play games of tic-tac-toe with your ears. The remix of Superpitcher’s “Happiness” swamps Aksel Schaufler’s resigned, sighing monotone in ever-breaking waves of weep.

On the cover of Lowlights, a mysterious figure stands by a dirt road, captured in medium shot, with black grain and wear-and-tear etching tiny patterns within the green-filtered frame. It’s an oddly moving image. Lawrence’s songs exist in just such a frame, within an interzone of affection. Touching and gentle, while oddly distant and cool to the touch, Lawrence’s teary-eyed productions are what happens after the night dies down and everyone’s left to mop up the remains of the day.

By Jon Dale

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