Pieter Nooten – Haven

Rocket Girl

I’m loving the sustained landscaping on this, those puckerings of melodious highlights and zithery arpeggios seemingly shivering out of a slowly clearing mist. That highly composed filmic vibe that transcends time,  as if caught in the yearning crystallisation of the moment. A perpetual dawn with contemplative glints of sensation magnified on accents of piano, cello and some rather unusual if subtle processing.

Born completely from a computer, this unique brew seems to have effectively erased its binary origins, to produce a warm and overtly human three way of neo-classical, ambient drone and electronica that can’t be easily pigeonholed. There’s obviously a lot of work gone into this, even if it all seems so effortless… natural… as if it just fell into place rather than rigorously notated. I hate to imagine how many on-screen layers were involved in making this glide so seamlessly or how much effort was involved in creating that incredible pull on your psyche. The end result certainly casts a incredibly immersive spell, full of shadowy melancholic hues. Imbues an affecting beauty, a resonance that pours light over moody reflection, constantly falling in and out of illumination losing its shape in the vastness of expanding space laced together in lattice-like patternations of harmonic spill.

Yes, you could say this has hooked me good and proper: the sparseness of the keys, the sparkling simplicity of it all – even if it does have a tendency to float off into the background in places, it’s not long until it’s whipped back into focus by some nicely spacial sounding notes or some other compositional cleverness. Pieter Nooten has produced some great work here, a deeply meditative and skillfully crafted flow that matches that Rothko naturalism of the cover art, glowing Simon Larbalestier-like in moody nitrate.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-