Frozen Dancers

Four years after their debut full length on Distraction records, close Hell Yeah family members Templehof are back on the label with a brand new album, Frozen Dancers. Italian’s Luciano Ermondi and Paolo Mazzacani are known for their hugely musical electronica; stuff that is rich with plenty of instruments and alive with shoe-gaze texture as evidence by previous EPs on this label like City Airport earlier in 2013 and You K back in 2012. The new nine-track album one again proves the duo to be in a league of their own when it comes to crafting spacious and emotive sound spaces. Things start with the trilling synths and intricate electronics of Drake, which swells from golden ambiance into a bustling brew of organic and analogue texture. From there things get dark and sad, with the heavy minor chords of ‘Monday is Black’. ‘Change’ then sees the duo play with broken beat patterns and urban moods of the sort you might find in a Burial of Four Tet set. Metal drums clatter a spare pattern as heavyweight bass props the whole thing up and its involving stuff from start to finish. Form there the mood and rhythm of the album continuesto ebb and flow in a way that makes it essential to be listened to in one full sitting. There are anxious and fractious vocals on ‘She Can’t Forgive ‘ that get paired off with torturous synth lines and unsettled arpeggiated melodies. It’s truly heart wrenching stuff but there is also more club-orientated fare like ‘The Dusk’, which sounds like deconstructed Chicago house rebuilt as ethereal, synth heavy electronica. Closer ‘Running Dog’ is another almost churchy and hymnal bit of ambiance littered with skittish percussion and skipping drums that soothes and moves you in equal measure. You wont hear a familiar pattern of recognisable sample anywhere throughout this album, it is a truly unique and beguiling melange of many different sound sources, genre influences and human emotions and is one that confirms Tempelhof to be one of the finest duo’s in their realm.