Spotlight on: Apparatjik

12th Feb 2010

Edi­tor Erica Anne Ver­non offers new grub for your plate…

Photo: Stian Andersen

STRANGE name, strange group­ing, strange sound. One rea­son why I have a pen­chant for this band is that they had an advan­tage over any poten­tial com­peti­tors: the ele­ment of sur­prise. Per­haps despite, or per­haps because I’ve seen so many CD’s come through the Red­brick office, I rarely warm to a band quickly. The debut album We Are Here was released just last week, and ever since I’ve been treat­ing it like a teenage crush – lis­ten­ing to them, think­ing about them, being slowly seduced by them. But you’re still won­der­ing who they are, so let’s shed some light.

Appa­ratjik (pro­nounced Apa-rat-chik) con­sist of four mem­bers. They’re not new­born music indus­try dar­lings, but in fact Magne Furuhol­men of A-ha, Jonas Bjerre of Mew, music pro­ducer Mar­tin Terefe and Guy Berry­man of Cold­play. One could say they fit the Wikipedia def­i­n­i­tion of a ‘super­group’. When indi­vid­u­als from already well estab­lished bands start mak­ing new music, it always pro­vokes ques­tions in people’s minds. For exam­ple, ‘they’re from such dif­fer­ent bands, how will this work?’, ‘what sound will they come up with?’ or sim­ply ‘why?’. There is no easy answer to how, what, why – but my ini­tial reac­tion was that this was an alter­na­tive out­let for each, as A-ha is over, Mew is under-appreciated and I can under­stand any­one want­ing to escape Coldplay.

What is solid how­ever, is the music. There is heavy use of syn­thetic sounds through­out, and the sound could be labelled ‘exper­i­men­tal’, rock, pop or even the vague ‘alter­na­tive’. The greater part of We Are Here has an instantly addic­tive qual­ity, most notably Snow Crys­tals and Arrow and Bow. An inter­est­ing array of darker and lighter tones are offered, often within one track itself due to con­stant chang­ing of direc­tion. It keeps the lis­tener on their toes; this is remark­able con­sid­er­ing there’s a fair amount of rep­e­ti­tion in some parts of the music and the lyrics. All the more credit to the band, who are undoubt­edly unit­ing their skills gained from pre­vi­ous musi­cal endeavours.

Unsur­pris­ingly, the vocals are mainly han­dled by Jonas Bjerre. Any­body with a knowl­edge of Mew’s music will be aware of his capa­bil­ity to com­mand his beau­ti­ful voice through an aston­ish­ing range, it’s com­pat­i­bil­ity with rel­a­tively heav­ier rock through to floaty pop, and his dis­po­si­tion for eccen­tric lyrics. How­ever, oth­ers vocals also appear, pro­vid­ing a con­trast with Bjerre’s trade­mark falsetto. The use of mul­ti­ple voices sep­a­rately and lay­ered together works par­tic­u­larly well on the dynamic yet haunt­ing Super­sonic Sound. Another per­sonal favourite is Josie; the high-pitched vocals are buoy­ant over a robust beat. The song’s beauty lies in its simplicity.

There isn’t a sin­gle bad track, but it’s not per­fect in any sense. I believe the key aspect of We Are Here is that it gen­er­ates excite­ment, and surely that is what one is always seek­ing for in music? Oth­ers refer to Appa­ratjik as a ‘side project’, and pre­vi­ously I would have done also, but this release has altered my opin­ion. I’ve realised that this is a seri­ous ven­ture, and there’s a clearer sense of direc­tion than I’d pre­vi­ously antic­i­pated. Appa­ratjik is not the prod­uct of self indul­gence, but an inno­v­a­tive and sur­pris­ingly acces­si­ble band.

So far, they’ve only had one pub­lic out­ing. The per­for­mance was con­tained in a semi­trans­par­ent fab­ric cube of small pro­por­tions. Visu­als were pro­jected onto the sur­faces and there­fore, only sil­hou­ettes were vis­i­ble of the inside. As pre­ten­tious as this may sound, pho­tographs and first-hand accounts tell me this was a beau­ti­ful sight, and in truth it made me ever the more keen to wit­ness them live. There’s no indi­ca­tion as of yet, when Appa­ratjik will hit our shores. My task is to be patient, your task is to dis­cover them before they do.