Review by Jim Hoey
A flurry of activity has reached us here in NYC from Dutch-based sound artist Pascal Plantinga. Three releases from the Ata Tak label have come out recently, featuring Platinga’s production and bass work, as well as vocals, with his moody pop sensibility the constant on all of these recordings. One features a collaboration with a traditional Japanese samisen player, another, a found-sound pop project, and the third is a live album, recorded at The Stone in NYC in 2009, with sax, and electronics. Bundled with this release is also a short film, entitled Learn To Speak Your Language, which is his visual and musical interpretation of what goes through a person’s mind in the seconds before they die.
A so-called “pop-eccentric”, Plantinga seems to be pretty damn busy right now, churning out these different recordings, showing off different sides of his approach to music. From Holland he seems to get around, working with a singer in Okinawa, Japan, downtown scene musicians in NYC, and his hometown crew in the Netherlands. What remains constant though, is his ability to capture the feeling of a moment and craft it into a slow-boiling song that rides out the emotion, checks through a number of possibilities, and eases into the most appropriate vein of expression.
