Keser

This is Keser’s third album, and third albums tend to go on of two ways – either proving the artist is happy to stick to a formula, knowing what their audience expects of them and delivering (or at least trying to) accordingly. Or, they sound stale, flat and tired, too bored to even think of doing anything else. Rare is the third album that really throws a band’s sound and vision into a new light, but Audeamus is one such rare beast.

The band talk of “stripping back their previously favoured orchestral layers”, and while this is true on some tracks, such as opener, ‘Aqua Aura’, on others, such as ‘Switch Into A Life’, the orchestral layers positively swoop and soar, to joyous effect. It has been commented on previously that Keser have a certain cinematic style to them and, if this is something they’ve only hinted at in the past, here it gets a welcome push centre stage.

Aqua Aura lulls the listener in gently, all sultry soundscapes and gently insistent rhythms, with a very danceable undertow, before ‘You Are A Project’ and ‘King Of The Satellite Town’ really start to up the pace, a little like being slowly caught in the slipstream of a slowly-moving jumbo jet, if there ever were such a thing.

This then, is just the ticket for gently exiting summer and blowing away those autumn blues. A fine example of an artist exploring and developing their voice without ever losing sight of what made them special in the first place.