Euro troubadour Milan Warmoeskerken charms our darned socks off with an instant classic entry to the pantheon of timeless Stroom beauties - daydreamy, hydroponic pastoralism to soundtrack urbane yearnings RIYL CS + Kreme, Dirty Beaches, Mittland Och Leo, Eyeless In Gaza, Cocteau Twins, Les Disques Du Crépuscule, Enno Velthuys, Felt, or the most crushed Joanne Robertson & Dean Blunt jams.
‘Leave Another Day’ is arguably the magnum opus of Milan W., whose breadcrumb trail of work as Crumar Young, and as part of Mittland Och Leo, Speedqueen, Beach, and others, has lured listeners deep into the s/Lowlands backwoods imagination over the past 16 years. The album’s dozen songs illuminate the thoughts of an old head on young shoulders; gilding and binding aspects of dusky country, folk-rock, blues, chamber-like jazz noir, spangled kosmiche and indie-pop, with flushes of synthetic warmth and a strikingly poised voice for the ages, perfectly suspended in-the-mix, floating moody above it all.
The Antwerp artist’s music could hardly be a more apt for release on Belgium’s Stroom, carrying with it a certain modest, lowkey vitality and slowness of thought we’ve come to associate with that strange, gently undulating sliver of Europe where things occur at their own time-out-of-joint (or as one put it to us, akin to an “absurd England”). It’s maybe a tenuous link, but the expressive instrumental synthy sentiment of ‘Blue Heron’ shares a title and evocative European soundscape feeling with Enno Velthuys’ early ‘80s peach, and can be heard as symptomatic of a smoky magique and almost medieval meets modernist appeal that riddles the whole album.
We could almost be hearing a more full voiced CS + Kreme (from that other eerie England, Oz) cooing from the floating chamber music of ‘I Wait’, whilst ‘All The Way’ evokes the Midlands lilt and jangle of Felt or less histrionic Eyeless in Gaza, and ‘Face To Face’ weaves in the soft female counterpoint of Martha Maieu, who lends nuanced, harmonised filament to swaying Lynchian centrepiece ‘Ballad’ and the simply gorgeous ‘Memories’. Milan’s contemporary colours are worn more explicitly in the skull-rub synth detunings and city pop detour coda of ‘Wanda’, which makes the stylistic balance of crepuscular airs from anachronstic eras feel all that more intoxicating, when contrasted with the contemporary x classical touches of chef’s kiss synth and strum that come together in his parting piece.
You can get the album now by heading over to Boomkat.