Whether you like your beats to purr or roar, chances are there's something for you in Dane Anders Trentemøller's debut album The Last Resort in 2006. Trentemøller's always possessed the wide-ranging vision to balance minimal and maximal tech-house, as first evinced by his singles and hired-gun remix work with regional peers the Knife and Röyksopp. Now on Resort, his compositional range and palette of wintry textures are on full display. It's becoming increasingly obvious that Trentemøller accomplishes this by infinitely re-inventing combinations of a relatively scaled-down toolkit: The frequent intermingling of shadows of minimal techno beats, the cutting austerity of surf rock whammy dives, 8-bit orchestras swelling into static. It's maybe most charming that Resort throws everything but the kitchen sink at you, but "everything" could pass muster at your local supermarket's express aisle.
Such moody, humanistic motifs dominate Into the Great Wide Yonder. Surf-inspired reverb guitar dots the record's highlight tracks, especially on "Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider Go!!!", on which cymbals and synthetic handclaps ride a wave of guitar fuzz and synths into surprisingly psychedelic territory. Unfortunately, Yonder's further analog forays are met with sometimes mixed results. Featuring the vocal talents (!) of fellow Dane Marie Fisker, Yonder's first single "Sycamore Feeling" opens with sleigh bells and the strums of an acoustic guitar: not exactly your everyday Nordic producer-type cut. The happy accidents only occasionally hit paydirt, however, as Fisker's smoky vocals somehow manage to vamp awkwardly over the chorus. There's almost too much to process considering Trentemøller's studiously prepared low-key arrangement.
Throughout, Yonder's melo [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| dic sensibility is only occasionally led by vocalists, featuring the guest talents of Solveig Sandnes and Josephine Philip (also Danish) and Guillemots vocalist Fyfe Dangerfield, but at all points the collaborations want for Trentemøller's melodic instrumental sensibilities. Take "Neverglade", which under-utilizes Dangerfield's suitably dangerous yowl. The head Guillemot recalls echoes of Elliott Smith and incessantly repeats Pavement homages to the "weatherman's sign of crooked rain, crooked rain." His contribution's confused homage seems counterintuitive considering the co-collaborators' varied talents.
However, not all the tracks lack the verve of Trentemøller's best instrumental work. The closing "Tide"'s lilt, its piano, live percussion, and church-bell effects soar. Some of the record's instrumental tracks, conversely, distort Trentemøller's agnostic stance towards dancefloor beats and electronic textures. You certainly don't blame him for seeking his own analog path, but some of Yonder's instrumentals lean on variety at the expense of a compositional base. Take The Last Resort, released in October 2006: That singles comp was an autumn record that nevertheless pounded down (in its special-edition, two-disc glory) like a premature hundred and 50-minute winter. By comparison, Into the Great Wide Yonder toes the line: Either it's a cold and intricate mélange of kaleidoscopic, cybernetic styles, or it's a simple hot mess.
