I can’t believe how much myself and Erik Levander have in common; it is just spooky. Parallel lives, pretty much. I was reading about how he had been working on this album for years, when a fatal hard drive failure sent it to the great virtual trashcan in the sky; then just this week, I became locked out of a spreadsheet I had been carefully cajoling into a state of analytical irrefutability, after I forgot the password. I had worked on that for hours. It had pivot tables and everything. Now that can’t be just coincidence, can it? Given his success at fundraising to attempt a recovery of the files, I’m going to try something similar. Except instead of money, I’m asking for donations of possible passwords. I’ve gone through all my usual ones - Bacharach and David song titles, mainly - but to no avail. Any words donated which don’t solve the problem will be recycled into my next review (believe me, you’ll never notice the difference). Help me out; it’ll take me at least half an hour to redo all that hard work.

With each release, Efterklang guitarist Rasmus Stolberg’s Rumraket label is becoming less and less of a quirky time-filling side-project, and more of a catalogue to be respected in its own right. Topping even last year’s excellent Slaraffenland album is Erik Levander’s now risen-from-the-digital-grave Kondens. Betwixt the minimalist tink-tink-tink of opener ‘Sekund” and the tick-tick-tick of closer “Sömnbrusten” is a treasure trove of electronica, studied classical, field recording and rampaging noise. Sometimes, as in the case of “Oskärpa“(featuring an unmistakeably MBV-influenced woozy guitar crescendo) it all features in the same piece. So the stately woodwind of “Månen Viskar” leads into the glitch and static of “Tölvupop”; the plucked strings and street chatter of “Vid Fönstret” leads into the swirling choral electronics of “Kvad”, which disappoints only by virtue of its atypical lack of Scandinavian typographical furniture. Anyone who had a heart would find something to love here. Hang on a minute, I haven’t tried that one…

Kondens is available to download now from Klicktrack. CD follows March 17th.