AKKU quintet - Depart [CD]

Following their acclaimed 2017 album, Aeon, Switzerland-based outfit, Akku Quintet have released their fourth record Depart. This release contains a sequence of darkly beautiful compositions by founder and drummer Manuel Pasquinelli. Best-known for his work in Swiss post-rock minimalist outfit, SONAR (recently collaborating with David Torn and Bill Laswell), Pasquinelli's writing contains an almost cinematic dimension that encompasses bittersweet moods and moments of unfolding drama. Between the mesmeric ostinato, subtly shifting grooves, resonant overtones, tingling harmonics and languorous, yearning melodies, Akku Quintet hover somewhere between smouldering, jazz-infused intimacy, expansive post-rock vistas and an insistent minimalist intensity.