Pastoral Blend / N Kramer & Magnus Bang Olsen

"Pastoral Blend" LP (2025) by N Kramer & Magnus Bang Olsen.

The album was recorded in Berlin between August 2023 and March 2024. It combines Kramer's improvisational approach with modern production techniques and Bang Olsen's emotive pedal steel guitar playing. The process began with meticulous recording of various guitar phrases and patterns, then reconstructing, reversing, and layering them. This created a foundational track upon which the album was shaped through further arrangement and development. This method expands on the creative process Kramer experimented with in his project with J. Foerster, Habitat (released on Leaving Records), resulting in music with a distinctive live feel and organic flow.

The album as a whole blends the warmth and intimacy of instrumental Americana with textural electronic processing reminiscent of early 2000s artists like Max/MSP, Fennesz and Alva Noto. Pastoral Blend is a soundscape that hovers between analogue warmth and digital fragmentation, a delicate balance that the duo tame with surprising ease.

As song titles like "Harvest," "Agrarian Dawn," "Grasslands," and "Weathered" suggest, Kramer and Bang Olsen weave a musical vocabulary rooted in themes of landscape, memory, and tradition. Deep within, beneath the rich layers of sound, there is a quiet attention to nostalgic musical structures. Therein lies the essence of the title "Pastoral Blend."