In ‘SnifferFavs’ over the next while we will write about 10 albums that have interested us in the last few years ( Biased Review Alert 🙂 ).
Rico Puestel is a German producer, live-act and DJ. Born in 1986, he generated an early love for music and became a multi-instrumentalist as he grew up in Usler, Lower-Saxony. He started spinning records and dealing with creative processing through various kinds of electronic music at the age of 12. In 2005 he released his first works through ‘Dark Noize Black Recordings’ and that was his baptism into the electronic world. In 2015 Puestel released his debut album ‘Savangaurd’.
Puestel’s 2014 track ‘Volute‘ (Featured on Savangaurd) was the catalyst in me stumbling across the little-coveted Puestel. The album opens with the glitching piano heavy ‘You Were Here‘ which utilises a simple piano melody throughout with a stop-start tempo moving it forward progressively. The haunting vocals overlapping each other give the track an eerie atmosphere which mixed with the piano leaves the listener wanting more. The album meanders gently through the Baltic violins of ‘Ubiquitios Ropes‘ and lands at the impressive ‘Van Ferry‘. This bass heavy number mixes Puestel’s trademark glitch male vs female vocal snippets with a strong synth piano lead and an all around feel good club vibe. The plodding ‘Redunant Unicums’ reasserts the Baltic feel and sounds like a remix of a Russian wedding song, upbeat with a dark deep vocal to give it depth. ‘All strings attached‘ has that tropical, tranquil, mellow Kygo-esque feel to it. The use of a chopping board sound makes this a song fit to accompany your housework on a rainy day. The album then takes a break, ‘Before I’ll Vanish‘, a song that is musically intelligent, yet un-memorable, stops us in our tracks and offers continuity and respite from the bass, snare and high tempo with classical pizzicato, brooding piano chords. ‘Five equals six in zen‘, ‘703 Cycles‘ and ‘The third part of the moon‘ all drift by without leaving a significant impact and are redeemed slightly by the highly impressive ‘Seventeens Infinity’ which would sit seemlessly into an Axel Boman or Roman Flugel set. ‘Volute‘, Puestel’s most complete composition closes out the album with gusto. This powerful humdinger compels us with the distorted vocals weaving in and out of each other amidst the powerful thump of the bass and the refreshing chords from the piano. This track truly showcases Puestel’s deep house credentials and leaves us expecting big things.
‘Savangaurd’ is an album in which Puestel has not confined himself to one style of electronic dance. It sounds like a mash-up of Parov Steler, Kygo and Roman Flugel all bashed in together. It hits it’s mark in places and flatters to deceive in others. All in all Puestel has the talent, but this record is not entirely the complete package.
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