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Thursday, February 12, 2009

Review: Zweiseitz - Zweisetz (Caroline Seitz)


Zweiseitz – Zweiseitz
2008, Caroline Seitz

Caroline Seitz hails from Bristol, Southwest, England, and creates some of the edgiest folk-electro music you’ve heard. Working with producer and college mate Kostia Rapoport, Seitz breaks new ground with sonic enhancements and derangements provided by Kostia. Performing and Zweiseitz, Seitz has created a highly interesting and unusual CD in the 4-track EP Zweiseitz. Hang on to your hats.

My Greatest Invention kicks things off in fine and weird fashion. This song, seemingly about falling in love with a robot, is incredibly frenetic. Zweiseitz comes off as a cross between Tori Amos and Bjork in a song meant to be humorous but perhaps serving as a harbinger of things to come. The Web is ethereal and strong; A fractured Tori Amos style composition that takes off into the electronic atmosphere thanks to producer Kostia. Make The Tape Rewind finds Kostia taking Seitz’ song and turning into something incomprehensible. The vocal and electronic effects here render Seitz’ diction unrecognizable; it’s a “because I can” type performance that actually undermines the song. To make up for it, Seitz leaves us with the gorgeous Forever In Disguise. If the purpose of Make The Tape Rewind was to hide the artist, then the ironically named Forever In Disguise finds Seitz there alone with her piano; heart on her sleeve. The song is slightly disjoined and disturbed – vulnerable and filled with the conflict of humanity.

Zweiseitz introduces herself to the world with her self-titled EP, but the recording sounds more like a process of finding herself musically. It’s obvious, particularly from Forever In Disguise, that Caroline Seitz is an incredibly talented songwriter, and a unique and memorable performer. In collaboration with producer/programmer Kostia, she has become quite enamored with surrendering her creations to the alterations and permutations of a producer with strong electronic proclivities. I would say that this EP is musically out of balance. It’s not bad; it has quite a lot of promise in fact, but Seitz and Kostia appear to still be finding the balance between her acoustic creations and the electronic faces he overlays them with. It would be my hope that they continue to explore the conjoined worlds of electronic and acoustic music as they may find themselves a very powerful creative force once they find their balance. But I also hope that Seitz continues to offer up the occasional stripped down performance as well. They’re very much worth waiting for.

Rating: 2.5 Stars (Out of 5)

You can learn more about Zweiseitz at www.myspace.com/zweiseitz. We were unable to find any online outlets selling Zweiseitz, but feel free to contact the artist through her MySpace page for purchasing information.

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