MUSETTE

The starting point of Drape Me in Velvet was a large collection of cassettes and reel to reel tapes from the 1950s and 1960s, many inherited from relatives. During the three years the album was recorded on these tapes, they were treated and mistreated with tools and violence. New sounds and instruments were recorded over the older recordings. The tapes were mistreated again, scratched, wrinkled.

Layer upon layer of melodies and tape memories were brought together to a whole where music for silent films, exotic easy listening and French chanson are some of the strands in the braid. The result is a historical collage where the passing of time is heard in anachronistic piano melodies and disintegrating chords. Ghosts of former recordings whisper in the warm background noise. This is music for amusement parks with neglected maintenance.

Drape Me in Velvet is an album so particular in nature that one gets ecstatic. The melodies and production are instantly recognizable as Musette’s own. A new language is created. What's perhaps the most unique is the marriage between the world of melodies and the lust to experiment. Seldom have we heard music with original ideas about sound and sound making coming out this melodious, lovable and accessible.

Joel Danell is Musette. Already with the last album Datum (2009, Tona Serenad), Musette showed that he had a unique musical character, but this is a work of an even greater magnitude.

Musicians: Joel Danell, Andreas Tengblad, Christopher Cantillo, Lars Ekman, Johan Jonsson, Linus Hillborg, Anders af Klintberg, Oskar Moberg, Nick Clifford