Album #264: AUA – I Don’t Want it Darker

• Released: 2020
• Origin: Leipzig, Germany
• Label: Crazysane
• Best Track: Glowing One

Without meaning to, I seem to be going through a spell of pretty experimental European stuff at the moment. German band AUA are the latest noise from the continent I’ve been made aware of, with debut album I Don’t Want It Darker released a month ago.

You’d probably call this a mixture of krautrock (which seems a deeply unimaginative label to pin on a German band, but it is appropriate due to the record’s looping, droning sound) and whimsical psychedelia.

It’s a really good half hour of music that comes into its own with the last two tracks. ‘Glowing One’ moves you with this mournful trumpet (or saxophone? Not sure) dirge as the background to its spoken chorus, while closer ‘Umami Karoshi’ rattles and bubbles through its verse, before driving into probably the album’s heaviest moment, while an unsettling ‘wooooooo’ goes on somewhere in the mix.

A record with a strange and curious quality that only adds to its haunting beauty.