Werkraum – Kristalle

After the promising but slightly unbalanced debut album Unsere Feuer Brennen I was curious what direction Werkraum would head for. Well, the project around Axel Frank has surprised me in a positive manner with the new mini album Kristalle. It brings us a collection of “traditionals and myths, tales and psychedelic love songs”.

Werkraum displays a much more traditional folk sound here. Gone are most synthetic, ambient and martial elements in favour of a purer acoustic sound. The general style is much more tranquil than on previous hymns like ‘Steh auf, Nordwind’. The result is a very pleasant mini album, which grows on me with each listening turn.

The first two tracks are my favourites. ‘Queen Mab’ is a lovely folk song with a 60’s touch, which clearly reminds me of Changes. Not so strange, because Nicholas and Robert from Changes participate themselves. Next is the title track ‘Chrystals’, perhaps the most robust and melodic piece, with the confident vocals of Nick Nedzynski from Lady Morphia.

‘Hoerne’ is a slow, moody instrumental interlude. ‘Wunde and Dorn’ takes us to romantic territories in a duet by Frank and the clear, sweet voice of Antje Hoppenrath. Another decent folk song follows with ‘Ornament’, while the album is closed by the surprising ‘La Fee Verte’, which contain a spacious psychedelic guitar sound (reminding me of Felt) and poetic spoken words with the grave voice of Robert Taylor. Nice!

artist: Werkraum
label: Ahnstern
details: mcd, 6 tracks [ahnstern 17]