Olaf HundValseusesReview

The track titles of Olaf Hund's second album ("Menuet", "Rock Around Ravel", "Tango") point towards the classical and dancehall music of early twentieth-century France. A strangely angular jeu d'ésprit on Erik Satie's Gymnopédies opens the album, complete with nostalgic vinyl crackle and thin, unresonant piano sound. Next comes a 'Charleston' where a trad jazz band is sampled in the background; then first a tuba,hi-hat, and then gradually a whole barrage of musical and industrial samples and percussion kick into the foreground. Having turned this surprising corner, you're pretty excited about what's coming next.

But what comes is more of the same techno-oriented collages of samples and electronics. It's churlish to complain, because it's fascinating stuff. Hund's sound world combines violins, bongos, car horns, hammond organ, solo soprano and glitchy electronics with a sensibility which is equal parts circus, Klezmer and film noir. You're never sure if the phone's ringing in the distance, someone is moving about in the flat upstairs or a pigeon is cooing outside the window. But the building up of multitrack loop textures, however whimsical the material or catchy the polyrhythm, does become a predictable process after a while.

That said, there are some good tunes and rich chord progressions, and the acoustic purity of that opening track isn't entirely lost there's a hint of it near the end in the wistful accordion solo of the "Boléro (des abeilles)" (Bees' Bolero). The arc of the album is also satisfying. Tickled by Hund's cover inscription ("I met a girl, she inspired me, I lost her. I made this music, hoping that she would call me back") it's irresistible to track a lover's sentiments on to the music, as it moves from fascination through exuberance and into darkness. But as the darkness turns first louche, and later Grand Guignol, you wonder whether you're truly witnessing a soul in pain, or whether the joke's on you. A glance at the artist's website (photoshoot of Hundwith Dalí moustache waving a chicken in the air) will confirm your worst suspicions.

Forget about the false trails, and Valseuses is a great listen even the third or fourth time round, thoughtfully put together by an artist who wears his considerable talent lightly.