The two previous releases by Rant (see Vital Weekly 453 and 549) were reviewed by Dolf Mulder and by me. While playing the new CD ‘Land’ I read the two old reviews and thought about the music. Should I re-direct this Dolf again? His review seemed a bit lukewarm to it, whereas my own review had a similar point of view: “Even when it’s just eight tracks and just under forty minutes, I think it’s a bit too uniform in execution to maintain my full attention throughout. But a couple of songs here and there are quite nice indeed”. The duo Rant, Merle Bennett on drums and Torsten Papenheim on guitar, explore very much the similar approach, but this time in thirteen tracks, which seem even shorter. Still very much within the format of pop song, but never quite like pop anyway. Stripped down to its bare essential, sometimes jazz like, a bit collage at other times, post rock like also, but all of these fields overlap each other. Improvised for sure, but also quite structured, certainly when they move into a real song as in ‘Hunderer’. My main problem with the previous is the same here: I think its all quite nice, but perhaps a bit too much for my liking. Sitting through all thirteen tracks was a bit too much but there are some diamonds in here. (FdW)
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Vital Weekly 783

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