Search - One Winter Is Notenuf :: One Winter Is Notenuf

Notenuf is a label to keep an eye on

Filmore Mescalito Holmes | tinymixtapes.com | 01/28/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Not all of us, I would go so far as to say a select few, are able to fall enchanted by the sight of a grocery bag caught in an updraft. Some of us humans are even cynical and depressed to the point of being hard to please. But every now and then, something comes along that's just beautiful enough to let the sun creep ever so slightly into even the darkest soul. For me, in the middle of a thirty day run of continual Vancouver rain (one millimetre short of breaking the record for January), One Winter Is Notenuf was one such blessing.

Limited to a retail production run of 500, every copy of this CD is original, first by their actual gluing/taping/folding hand assembly and doubly so by the exclusive tree fingerprint. Every cover contains a unique tree that was individually grown digitally and randomly. In the grand scheme of things, these little details don't really matter much -music is music for better or worse- but it's these obvious attentions to detail, putting effort into making a special product, that not only keeps me buying music, but feeling truly happy about it. It's gestures like this that are utterly lost on mainstream labels. Aurally representing the image of the snowflake tree is a solid mix of chill tracks with just a hint of glitch. Before this, I'm ashamed to admit I had only heard about all of three artists in the tracklisting (Bitmap, Languis, and Ulrich Schnauss). So, by the same token, I also didn't have high hopes. But after dope glitch house/downtempo tracks from Jon Sheffield and Miles Tilmann, Mercurial's glitch-hop and Shawn Feeney's Beta Band come Nightmares On Wax trip-hop blew my mind wide open, casting the shadows aside with rays of Aphex light. Ulrich Schnauss helps Céline (no, not that Celine) to some of his rich ambient techno too while Languis commits a typically Kraftwerkian minimal IDM cut. I usually find most soundtracks and compilations to be useless, but it really doesn't get much better than this when it comes to music. Judging from this, Notenuf is a label to keep an eye on in the world of electronica."