“Baroque-Pop-Folktronic-Neo-Classical-Something-Or-Other” is how Haiku Salut describe themselves, but I’m not even sure whether this actually covers the number of bases that their debut album effortlessly flits through over it’s twelve tracks. The all female trio of Gemma, Louise and Sophie, from the Derbyshire Dales, already have one EP under their belt: 2012’s How We Got Along After the Yarn Bomb. A track from which was featured in a short film entitled ‘Three Creatures’.
From first listen, Tricolore will immediately draw you in, and from here you will be drawn deeper and deeper, continually discovering new noises within these bizzarre instrumental soundscapes to keep you coming back. A little twee perhaps in parts (no bad thing), but that’s also offset perfectly with a tonne of electro glitches, noises, bleeps and beats. The album definitely has an air of soundtrack about it in many places and given the band say their music is influenced by the film soundtracks of Yann Tiersen and Benoît Charest, as well as being heavily influenced by the writing of Haruki Murakami it’s not really that surprising.
Haiku Salut have a huge arsenal of instruments at their disposal and live each member seems equally comfortable chipping in with playing any of them, swapping around like a game of musical pass the parcel where the track requires it.
It’s hard to pick single tracks out as highlights as the album sits so well as a full body of work, taking you on a near forty minute journey to somewhere else and providing some escapism from the hubbub of the daily grind. Fans of Amelie will immediately feel at ease. Los Elefantes was released as a download and has had airplay on BBC6 from several of the DJs and its easy to why, its absolutely glorious from start to finish. Beautiful piano joined by accordian which then drops to bass notes before some electro glitches slowly bring the whole thing back to an elated climaxe complete with tribal-esque drumming.
This is the most interesting thing I’ve heard so far this year and urge you to check it out.
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Released 25th March 2013
