Daas is a mixture of new and previously unreleased material. It starts with the title track a staggeringly beautifully melancholic piece. Its basic sound is neo classical featuring a cello and a violin. It brings to mind two different people. Gavin Bryars and Tony Conrad. The string parts flitting between the two different styles. The more contemporary string quartet sound of Bryars (slow melancholic pieces the range of notes fairly narrow) and the drone sound that you most immediately associate with Tony Conrad or La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music. Apart from the strings you have an element of experimental music with some found sounds of what could be people moving about or just some general clanking and banging. It’s all very quiet and in the background but adds a certain atmosphere to the piece.

It’s almost like listening to a film sound track.Flotter, Koploop and Grom were all on a limited 3” CDr and all three have a similar feel to them. Again it’s very much the neo classical feel with a heavy emphasis on string sounds and to an extent drones and some other keyboard sounds. All the pieces are very slow and in a minor key giving them again that melancholy sound. Also the occasional environmental sounds that are used to great effect on the first track are also used in this group of three pieces.

It may sound like what I’m saying it that all the tracks sound the same and whilst yes they are all using the same basic template as a starting point they still all sound different enough and unique enough to make you want to come back to particular ones rather than just sticking any piece on and making do with whatever you come across.

The final piece Onkruid was originally on “A Room Forever” a split lp with Matt Davies and was made for an installation. Again we have a lot of string sounds, some that almost sound like environmental sounds recorded possibly at sea (I could so easily be wrong there) and a piece that builds very, very slowly getting louder in volume and intensity.

My only real criticism of these tracks is that only one appears to have real strings on. The rest sound like they are done on synthesisers. I’m sure the cost of getting half decent string players into a recording studio is fairly prohibitive for a release that isn’t going to generate a huge profit given its limited audience but it would be interesting to hear these pieces played by a real string quartet.

An excellent release to finish off the year.