Several years ago, while living in Southern Germany, my favorite pastime was to attend one of the incredible number of music events going on during any given weekend. Off I would go in my beat up Volkswagen, focused only on the destination. The first exception to this was a concert I went to see outside of Vienna, Austria. As I crossed the border into Austria I began to notice an increase in the variation of altitudes. Deep valleys began to appear next to increasingly high mountains, with small villages perched precariously on the edges of large heights.

The autobahn in northwest Austria affords a startlingly beautiful view of the country’s landscape. When you first take your eyes off the road it hits you all at once, a transfixing blend of almost neon blue skies and vivid green grass landscapes. The country looks every bit like a postcard you can imagine from a gift shop at the foot of the Swiss Alps, with mountains ascending triumphantly into languid milky colored clouds. As the drive continued I felt intoxicated by the beauty of the landscape, flying down a road built for speed as it wound downward through hillsides and eventually around the sides of the mountains themselves. Here the only distractions were the increasing amount of government structures: the occasional tollbooth or safety sign knocking you out of your pristine mountain drive reverie to inform you of some necessary piece of information. I had been hypnotized by the stunning beauty that surrounded me. There was no order to it, only beauty.

This trip and these memories were brought to mind while listening to Skyphone’s latest, Avellaneda. Skyphone are a trio hailing from Denmark, a country that seems to have a large amount of musical talent despite its very small size. If you follow the Danish music scene you’ve likely heard of Skyphone, they received a Best Album nod in the Danish music journalism awards for their 2004 debut album Fabula. The band’s label, Rune Grammafon, describes the band’s debut as having had a grand design, three gentlemen with a specific sound in mind and with a specific set of musical instruments. For this years’ Avellaneda, the band was deliberately more ambiguous before starting out, wishing to diversify not just their sound but also their already eclectic mix of studio equipment. Due to a geographical separation of the band members, the project grew from a backyard recording project to something with larger and more widespread aspirations. In place of the electronic ambient nature of their debut is a sound more in the realm of early 2000s Four Tet style, while some of the more soothing tracks bear a startling similarity to the Icelandic electronic group Múm.

The influences are not overwhelming, however, and this is why memories of that specific road trip come to mind. Sitting down with Avellaneda is very much musically similar to driving through Austria at 180 kilometers per hour. Once you let your mind wander from the strictly electronic/instrumental fusion in front of you, you begin to see a very beautiful landscape of sounds that differ greatly from one minute to the next. At first you’re simply struck by the fact that you can recognize beauty at what you’re hearing even though there seems to be no order to it. Before long you’re coasting along with the record, letting its occasional bursts of unintelligibility fly by to be replaced by what you feel must be the point: a haphazardly organized glimpse of beauty interspersed with the occasional call of a trumpet that seems out of place, or a repetitive blip-bleep that guides you through a track despite its somewhat unpleasant nature. Like a drive through Austria, halfway through you feel entranced at having given so much trust to the sounds that are guiding you along the way. There’s no obvious order, nothing certain as you drive your way through Avellaneda. At its end you’re left appreciating the music for what it is: a journey that someone wanted to lead you on, a musical highway that was drilled through mountains of potential sounds simply to create a route. Beauty ends up as the enjoyable by-product.

-Brendan Kraft