musette

Drape Me In Velvet

**Includes download code redeemable from the label** Musette is a very dapper looking gent called Joel Danell who makes utterly enchanting exotica and records onto time-worn and overused tape. 'Drape Me In Velvet' is his first vinyl release and first record for the lovely Swedish label, Häpna. It's also one of the most endearing albums to cross our paths from the label so far, braiding hand-played strands of wheezy organ music with rippling easy listening rhythms in a gloriously spacey and tantalisingly out-of-reach sound world. We're a bit partial to good use of tape-recorded techniques around these parts, but this fella's got something really special going on, apparently using half-century-old reel-to-reels and cassettes inherited from his family and dating to the '50s and '60s to achieve his uncannily warm and anachronistic aesthetic. There's obviously a playful sense of irony at work, to be able to craft such archaic work in an age of futuristic possibilities. And like, say, The Caretaker, it's matched and masked with a sincerity that's loveably demented and always accessible and reality-stifling when you need it - as though providing a glimpse into the whiskey and prescription smudged memory recess of a character from Mad Men. Like we say, it's one of the years first real gems, a record we'll all surely be getting better acquainted with.