Loke Rahbek has always thought a lot about vulnerability. In 2014, the Copenhagen-based musician released an album under his Croatian Amor moniker that could only be purchased by sending him a nude self-portrait. A year earlier, his band Vår—a collaboration with Iceage’s Elias Bender Rønnenfelt—released a record with a mirror for a cover; picking it up off the shelf meant implicating yourself in the music, the listener implicitly becoming part of the product. These sorts of gestures can seem like marketing gimmicks, but there’s a sincerity in the message behind them. He’s willing to bare his soul to you if you’ll do the same.
With the exception of some noisier releases early in the project’s lifespan, Croatian Amor’s music has largely mirrored that warmth. Consider his 2016 album Love Means Taking Action, which he’s said was about “a quest to love strangers so that they stop being strangers,” and consisted mostly of glittering ambient instrumentals and heavenly vocal samples. It glowed with surprising humanity, and it has been a tone-setter for much of his work since. Body of Water, his 2018 collaboration with the Swedish producer Varg2TM, was the furthest he’d pursued his more tranquil interests. Its four tracks were misty and abstract, not unlike the cosmic excursions of Steve Roach or the synth-led naivete of ’80s new age labels like Valley of the Sun.
The sequel, Body of Carbon, appears quite dissimilar on the surface. Like its predecessor, it’s driven by abstract synth work, but the mood is different—more inky and earthy. The title track opens with squealing synth work, which on its own is enough to separate it from the wispy pieces on Body of Water, but the track quickly tacks on gnarled layers until it reaches a freakish approximation of a grime beat—replete with a barking kick drum that might otherwise echo through Thunderdome.
Heavier music isn’t unfamiliar territory for the duo, though. Rahbek’s other projects often include tortured industrial excursions, and Varg2TM’s catalog is frequently dancefloor-adjacent—even if he holds some reservations about that whole scene. So when their wheezing ambiance is accompanied by kick drum punishment, like on “Tell Your Tale to the River,” it’s not necessarily so unexpected. They know how to rage when the occasion calls for it.
But the stylistic left turn is ultimately an act of deception. Despite its sharper edges, Body of Carbon finds a way to further explore the gentle, humanistic approach demonstrated on Body of Water. You can hear this guiding principle in even its most twisted tracks. Outside of the hopscotching bass drum, the gasping synths and soaring trance leads of “Tell Your Tale to the River” feel full of air and light. In approach, if not in sound, it recalls some of Coil’s best records, in which tenderness and torment lock in embrace.
The record’s most striking moments come in the delirious haze of the second track, “God’s Face in the Water.” The foggy instrumental echoes all kinds of emotional electronic music—from Slowdive’s windswept ambient work on Pygmalion to the devotional miniatures on PAN’s Mono No Aware compilation—as a digital voice murmurs mantra-esque phrases about finding miracles in the mundane. “I see God in the water in my water bottle,” the voice says. “God in the strobe lights.” It underscores the same point Rahbek was making with those idiosyncratic releases earlier this decade. Even in a harsh, cold world, there’s beauty if you’re open to finding it.
