Building Castles Out of Matchsticks "There is no Modern Romance..."

new material from the brilliant mind of Anne Sulikowski!

Anne Sulikowski is amongst the most honest and forthcoming artists in the electronic genre. Her work is raw, heartfelt, and uncompromising. She lingers in her sadness, revels in her happiness and all the while is able to share these feelings with her listeners. It's a powerful kind of talent combined with a powerful sense of identity that allows her to do this sort of work, and I for one am glad that she has both, because Anne makes some of the best music going these days.

"There is No Modern Romance" is the latest release by Anne's project Building Castles out of Matchsticks. Wholly improvised one evening (around 3am to be precise), the disc is a testimony to the pain of broken hearts, lonely nights, solitude and emptiness. Tracks are left unnamed which allows the listener to come to their own conclusions about meaning without any preconceptions. But titled or not, the sense of abandonment and isolation in the music is unmistakeable, represented in a myriad of ways from simple piano to distortion loops to plaintive keyboard melodies to quiet lyrical pieces and more, ranging from delicately beautiful to harsh noise and feedback. It's a dark and melancholy journey through unhappy places, but it's also a journey so desperately familiar that you can't help but recognize some of it's landmarks.

There's a tremendous irony that I like Anne's work so much, that songs so painfully sad could be enjoyed so much. But maybe that's the point. Maybe the enjoyment comes from being able to connect with Anne's work and experiences, to be able to identify with it. With "There is No Modern Romance" Anne has been able to give voice to feelings and ideas that few could express so succinctly, feelings and ideas that we've all shared at one or many points in our lives. If you've ever laid awake at 3am and wondered why the bedroom is so cold, why your voice sounds so hollow in an empty apartment, or why the stars only shine half as bright when you're alone, then this is the disc for you.

rik - ping things