Netlabels are a funny thing. I have a hard time saying it’s a place to consistently find good music, but once in a while, something comes out and it becomes one of my year’s favorite albums. This time, it’s taking place at eerik inpuj sound with Makunouchi Bento’s ‘Swimé‘.

Now i can’t lie, i am kind of jealous that Inpuj has this and not my label. I have been following Makunouchi Bento for a while and even released him earlier. As the years progress, his music keeps on getting better, stranger and more convoluted while keeping a very specific esthetic. On ‘Swimé‘, i feel they have finally found their sound and have matured into musicians that truthfully explore and bring something new to avant-garde and contemporary music.

Evading any attempt to describe the style of their songs, they whimsically offend the limits of your attention span as you travel within the many scenes they create ; Swimé is a travelling circus filled with suspensful moments, drama and humor. The songs fade into each other, removing any sense of remembrance and letting only the present be. Undecipherable percussions are erratically played over a lonely accordeon, a piano is awkwardly trying to take over the under-laying cacophony, immense strings move over alien voices. Makunouchi Bento keeps on entertaining us while we wait impatiently for the glimpses of hope they so masterfully coax into playing hide & seek with us.

A greatly put together and involving experiment into musique-concrète, jazz and contemporary music. ‘Swimé‘ keeps creeping up on you like carefully glued collages with ambiguous pasts, lost in a strange, desolated romanian alley.