Description
Tracklisting:
1. Soul Collector
2. Feathered Ghosts
3. Queen of the Highway
4. Sole Dancer
5. Kamikaze
6. Walk with Thor
7. First Applause
8. Balance
9. Float
10. Precious Freedom
Inspired by sufi-music, mali-blues, western low-fi pop and avant-garde Kristian Harting aims to write beautiful songs and music using what is at hand of gritty, noisy, pretty, dirty, smooth, wonderful sounds. Mainly his guitar, voice, circuit-bending, effects-pushing and diverse electronic and acoustic trips. He calls himself being in a a folky trip hop blues metal universe, dubbing his attitude and approach as a spiritual journey as well as a physical one. It is my way of communicating freely and truthfully and articulate the ever-changing waves of confusion, emotions, ideas, people, power and surroundings, that is my life.
With his first album, released under his own name Kristian channels this approach into a genre-bending form by excorcising demons he had to battle in his most recent past. In a very personal approach the title “Float” refers to what he describes as survival-strategy in a period of his life characterized by an extreme personal, emotional and financial turmoil, so chaotic and exhausting that it almost devastated him: “I had to be like water. Just float. Not think, not try to organize nor control the chaos, the perpetual beats to my chest and slaps in my face. I had to be like water or I would break. Just float around and away. Not crack like a rock or blow out like a fire. It was a spiritual journey. A test.”
The work on this album was a free harbour where he could unload the harvest from a furious sea by creating, playing and arranging each part on his own – writing, producing, recording, mixing – finding his own true place. By listening to the intimate recording you can feel the boiling inside its creator, grabbing, shaping and channeling true emotions into music – an archaic approach but pretty much what music is made for. Rarely it gets shaped so honest like here: these songs come from a chaotic, dark and desperate place, but for Kristian, they remain full of hope and love. “My wish is that anyone listening to them will feel this too.” he sums up the attitude behind the release
