Piramida

(4AD)

This fourth album from the Danish indie experimentalists turns on a "sound sampling" trip they made to the town of the title, an abandoned Russian mining settlement on Norway's Svalbard archipelago. In one building they found an abandoned grand piano which they recorded, later manipulating the sample in their Berlin base to create the synth sound that runs throughout the album. Accordingly, a ghost town mood pervades Piramida. It even informs the song titles: Black Summer, Hollow Mountain, Between The Walls and The Ghost all carry an extra charge as a result of the landscape in which they were birthed and the musical tools used to construct them. The band tours the UK next month performing the album with the Northern Sinfonia, but even the recorded version has a lush orchestral feel onto which they bolt their expressive percussion and understated electronica, while Casper Clausen's mournful baritone intones lyrics about love and loss. At times it recalls the work of Japan, elsewhere Blue Nile and Tindersticks. Piramida is more than the sum of those parts, however – and it's never less than gorgeous.