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Since my sense of humour has a remarkable lack of fun and taste, I´ll avoid any joke about this band´s name and the famous Dutch football player, to the benefit of you the reader. Eibon Records is the label behind this release, so the accolyte (¿) already wonders this is not a punk band, certainly. A female voice speaking Italian over a cold sonic passage ushers the listener into the album and suddenly the spirit of Canaan gets in the picture. Drums, guitars and bass complete this the opening track and the listener fasten the seatbelt preparing for the attack. After that intro, the second song is usually the first “real” one, I thought... but Vanessa Van Basten fooled me and used just two guitar chords and a toy´s repetitive sampled voice to complete 39 seconds long “Love”... and then... wow, I feel like following a movie´s plot or something... and the whole thing is something similar, in the sense “La Stanza Di Swedenborg” is a deep album with interesting and mature ideas and a good dose of variety. It brings in the night influences as Katatonia, Sigur Rós, Canaan and others. Here we have distorted electric guitars that many people despise nowadays when the ambient thing comes to the fore, but also accoustic passages –whether folk or incidental-, “sweet” dissonances, movie samples... harmonicas, samples... elements are not enough to make an album convincing, the most important thing is to be sensible and have a respectable level of taste. These guys fulfill those requirements.
The fresh thing about this album is its powerful touch so here you won´t find any sleeper music or ambiental sounds. Each song is distinctive from the rest, and in a song like the last one you can see the meeting of doomy guitar chords and a fast passage in the vein of Sonic Youth´s “Theresa´s Sound World”. Sometimes this is rather a collage than a blend itself, variety of styles and not a mixture as we know it. A style of their own is somehow looming, alive and kicking. The use of noises and samples is quite wise and serious; the feeling of balance and maturity in the arrangements is the most stunning thing about this album, along with the sensitive songmaking. It takes various listenings to digest properly the amalgam of sounds. However, the band´s music is friendly enough to favour further tries -although we´re not hearing a quite conventional, commercial album. Lithe, dynamic, amazingly clean, professional; combining manifold influences, Vanessa Van Basten performs high quality emotional music.
| Tracklist |
| 1. La Stanza Di Swedenborg |
| 2. Love |
| 3. Dole |
| 4. Giornada De Oro |
| 5. Il Faro |
| 6. Floaters |
| 7. Vanja |
| 8. Good Morning, Vanessa Van Basten! |
: 40.15
| Buy other Vanessa Van Basten albums |
