Magazine / Europe / 2020 / LP+CD BOX
Easy listening glitch innovator and pioneer Curd Duca presents his first work in 20 years; tiling 28 gorgeous vignettes in the first of a welcome trilogy for Cologne’s Magazine. Waves 2 and 3 will be released in 2021.
Aside from the Austrian artist’s genteel self-released album of accordion cut-ups, ‘Waves 1’ marks the return of a lowkey but vital figure from the ‘90s experimental electronic scene, whose series of LPs (Easy Listening and Elevator), adorned with a distinctive play on a famous logo, caught eyes and ears in record shops around the world via release on Normal and Mille Plateaux, most often making their way to chill-out sessions and the best record collections.
Curd Duca’s return could hardly be better timed for an era clearly in need of enchantment and peace, rustling together a spellbinding mosaic of sampled / processed ephemera that uncannily induces hypnagogic states with its succession of soothing but elusive, fragmentary moments. It’s exceptionally well done, constantly spouting with lovely new ideas that evaporate, segue, transition to the next with a illusionist’s sleight-of-hand, adding up to one of the cutest and mercurial albums you’ll cop this year. - boomkat
Part of the beauty of Curd Duca’s album lies in the fact that it opens up from so many perspectives. Situated somewhere between pop and avantgarde, it can be seen as a collection of treasures, a commentary on our acoustic environment, as an attempt to dissect the world and to stylize its parts. Some pieces are exaggerations. Some allusions. Others abstractions, parodies, and transfigurations. It is often not so clear if the music is based on a sample or a synthetic sound. This music should not be trivialized or underestimated. With Waves, Duca is exploring the essence of sound, in various layers of meaning. - Björn Gottstein, Donaueschingen Music Festival.