Brunnen is the alter ego of Dutch musician and Beequeen member Freek Kinkelaar. He began his career by making his own experimental cassette recordings in the 80's and has since released dozens of albums and singles primarily with Beequeen or under his Brunnen moniker.
The folks over at Beta-lactam Ring Records have recently issued this delightful little treasure entitled Swoon which in effect is his debut album consisting of fifteen tracks recorded between 1991-1993. Originally issued in very limited quantities and only on vinyl it has now been cleaned up and given a proper remastering treatment.
Consisting mostly of songs written and performed on his vintage Ensonic ESQ 1 synthesizer these compositions have a very delicate and minimalist feel to them overall. The vocals are delivered in warm, hushed tones as the soft synth patterns wrap snuggly around his quirky tales of love. In fact both Kinkelaar's voice and music bear more than a passing resemblance to Legendary Pink Dots front man Edward K-Spel, someone he has been known to collaborate with in the past, and in fact Ka-Spel does contribute a keyboard sequence on the track "Scars on a windowpane".
Swoon certainly won't be to everyone's liking but if you've followed Kinelaar's career and you've enjoyed the kind of music he's made over the years I think you'll find that it fits in nicely with his overall body of work. This isn't party music by any stretch of the imagination; it's more like an odd little curio you've been saving up for that perfect rainy Sunday morning.
Track Listing
1) Wish
2) Scars on a windowpane
3) Thought
4) Pedigree
5) The grass arena
6) The captain's day
7) Forever in white
8) Hattrick
9) Shame
10) The wolf hour
11) Not Alice
12) Not such a pretty sight
13) Verdi cries
14) Colours
15) Cracked