Secede, Tryshasla (Sending Orbs)

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A huge mural of a work crafted solely by Lennart van der Last (with a little help from fellow Dutchman Kettel on one track), Tryshasla is one of the most entertaining records of the year. The somewhat sugary paintings featured in the CD booklet are like postcards from the world you are about to visit as you are carried along on the Hogwarts Express to Middle Earth via Narnia, with a stop on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

Actual images aside, this album is an ear-tickling delight. A great, big amusement park of a record, reminiscent less of any contemporary trend in melodic electronica than of something like the equally colourful tapestries woven by The Orb, Future Sound of London (especially "Lifeforms") and Global Communications in the mid-1990s.

Secede is no mere epigone or nostagia monger, though. His stuff bears a very personal stamp. With Tryshasla, he whips up a virtual three-ringed circus - there´s so much going on you don´t know where to look. He seems to have sampled everything but the kitchen sink (hmmm, running water now; that may just be the kitchen sink after all) and creates big, beautiful extravaganzas of great imagination.