San Francisco’s Dark Entries is undoubtedly going through a period of bright-eyed and bushy-tailedness, and the reissue of Max Guld’s For Enden Af Corridoren is no exception. The record is a solitary enterprise, recorded between 1984 and ’85 in a flat on the outskirts of Copenhagen, which, as you can imagine, was at the end of a corridor. And what a corridor it must have been. Guld’s record is an illustrious example of concentrated home-synth, and joins the ranks of what’s almost a genre of serious and passionate and Scandinavian solo male works, up there with Lars Falk’s Through, Glenn Winter’s Bruna Hundars Död or Daily Fauli’s Fauli Til Dauli.
Released on tape in only 100 copies and relatively under-celebrated since its release, the record is 40-odd minutes of sparse synthesiser pieces that are both unpretentious and clever; each is a little world of its own, punctuated here and there by mechanic voices, luscious guitars and delicate rhythmic patterns. The tone is most nobly ‘minimal’, winking equally to a certain soft post-punk mal de vivre and quasi-muzaky atmospheres of a cold Kosmische. There are plenty of childish melodies and folk progressions here, treated with interesting sounds, delicate when you expect hard, harsh when you’ve let down your guard. For Enden af Corridoren will enter that golden hall of intimate, quiet, cheap and inventive synthwave which makes for the best kind of private listening.
ACC words 