Few Nolder – New Folder [Planet Mu]

It’s not often you get your hands on some electronica from Lithuania but then Planet Mu are always throwing out surprises. Few Nolder is the project of Linus Strockis and this is his debut album New Folder. His sound is hard to pin down in some respects; it’s a hybrid of off-centre, hypnotic glitch riddled house music and techno with a slightly progressive disco edge. There are vocal tracks featuring the voice of Nolder’s talented local singer Rut, but most of the time its space age wonked out house that’s so dreamy it creates a whole world of its own.

New Folder opens, ‘No Mo’ drops out. This track was released last yeah on Mu and starts the album in a way it means to go on, lilting drums based vaguely on house rhythms but really knocked off point into a sideways groove build until even stranger synths take over that are chopped and screwed into strange shapes of sound to create some truly hypnotic grooves. There is a distinctly Euro-House vibe at play here with arpeggios and filters a plenty but its done in such a subtle almost lo-fi way that it doesn’t ever reach into the cheesy end of that market.

It’s a truly compelling album that you can drift in and out of, there is a real laid back mesmerizing feel to the way Strockis plays with sound, grooves get looped and dubbed out until they become almost psychedelic in nature. It’s a colourful album that hardly goes of course from its strange otherworldly template. Tracks like ‘Pillow’, ‘Fluttery’ and ‘Top’ all have this feel but the latter almost has a hands in the air euphoric moment as the high ends are shaped into fuzzy dance floor builds, the floot loops of ‘Chika’ are another highlight that give off an air of Ibzia sunsets somehow. The vocal track ‘El Snig (Feat. Rut)’ is in what I presume to be Lithuanian but it still has a strange nu-disco soulful feel to it. Everything almost feels so simple until you get deeper into the tracks and you realise everything has been whipped into so many different shapes that come out the other end as these huge almost anthem-like house riffs.

Few Nolder makes a new and strange variation on house that will defiantly hit the right buttons for the more adventurous heads out there.

Hear Clips: Few Nolder – New Folder [Planet Mu]