‘With lyrics of snapped rachides and cameos from hip hop heavyweights, you’d be forgiven for fearing a seismic shift in focus as they retract their toes from the avant-garde to embrace a rather more accessible aesthetic. Flashes of the wilfully outré remain, not least in Vonsild’s voice itself – a slippery falsetto that’s tricky to pin down and harder still to comprehend – but even from an external perspective, they’ve been gravely undervalued for all too long already.’
Dots & Dashes review Infinity Pool – the third full-length from the ‘glorious irregularities in an increasingly regular musical landscape’ that are When Saints Go Machine.
‘There’s an inimitable off-kilt pop dexterity to all that Nikolaj Manuel Vonsild’s When Saints Go Machine contrive to fabric, and no longer is Iodine merely ‘a chemical element with symbol I and atomic number 53’ but instead also a massive splash from the Danes’ forthcoming third, Infinity Pool. It’s a record which, released in conjunction with EMI, may see the Scandinavian eccentrics enter into a more widespread cognisance and along with the Killer Mike-featuring Love And Respect, Iodine is an incontrovertible highlight that serves as a nebulous billow of avant-garde suavity pumped out of the experimental and into an all the more mainstream aesthetic – its chorus a deferential, if perhaps indirect homage to Kate Bush’s inexhaustible Running Up That Hill. And tirelessly excellent this one is, as well.’
Infinity Pool is released May 20th on EMI / !K7.
‘A never-ending source of infinite hope and optimism for the year ahead comes in the sure to be beguiling release of When Saints Go Machine’s forthcoming third full-length Infinity Pool, which grows forever more imminent. It’s expected to ooze into being in a couple weeks’ time and although we’ve already heard opener Love And Respect, here quickening its pace and so too slicking its latent house aesthetic into something all the more discernible are Ohio duo Teengirl Fantasy who’ve a consummately mechanical redux to bestow upon us. Featuring snaps of Killer Mike’s doughy vocal scattered among glimpses of a repressed euphoria, what sound snippets of Ludovico Einaudi’s In a Time Lapse, and an ever intensifying sense of impending crescendo it makes for a masterful redo of an already winsome reintroduction to the irreproachable Nordic troupe.’
Infinity Pool is out May 13th via !K7.
‘Think of an Icelandic lady. Hold her frozen in thought a moment, clench her tight, and ceremoniously throw her to the fires of disinterest, for as long as Ms. Guðmundsdóttir flatters to deceive with multimedial nonsenses in place of musical prowess, the door is open for the inscrutable North Atlantic islet to spew forth another starlet. And only time will tell if that may yet be Reykjavik’s Disa Jakobs, who is henceforth artistically recognised as DISA though that which becomes immediately apparent is that Jakobs is a talent aflame with fascination. She is, akin to her native realm, ‘cold yet compelling’ as she complies with the notion of an ever-present, ‘underlying risk of eruption.’ Though she has since uprooted and replanted in the fecund avant-garde landscape of Copenhagen, and certainly Sun is emblematic of a Nordic hybridising of the two disparate reaches: there’s an inscrutable volatility to it, as resonant clanking and ominous throbbing are thinly veiled by melodramatic swathes of sweeping majesty not dissimilar to those in which When Saints Go Machine are oft bundled up in. Ultimately, it’s nigh on impossible not to be swept away by it all, as marching toms thunder and pound their impressive way into an otherwise slight metaphysical canvas of whitish noises and darkened splurges of synthetic intervention, however it’s Jakobs’ slowly smouldering vocal which gradually catches like cinders in the roaring belly of an incinerator, only to inevitably abate and disperse akin to ashes atop an oceanic wind which seals the figurative deal here proposed. And certainly as it flickers to a grandiose crescendo, it sounds considerably more striking than anything Björk has radiated of late…’
