50 YEARS OF KNUST: LÖWENZAHNHONIG50 YEARS OF KNUST: LÖWENZAHNHONIG

With Skylinekiss, the Swiss instrumental trio dandelion honey is back with a cinematic, slowly grooving single - somewhere between alpine Zen surfing, dreamy slow pop and chamber music psychedelia. A guitar flickers like sunlight through the cracks of old barn wood, the bass tells with patience and the drums breathe in landscapes instead of in bars. You think of Khruangbin, or Tortoise, or Yo La Tengo -- music for everyone who not only listens to it, but goes along with it. A quiet dance through memory and light. It was midsummer when dandelion honey moved into the barn. No studio, no big city noise, no everyday worries. Only the air, heavy with sundust and blossom scent, the milky light between the cracks of the wooden bars and a collection of instruments that sounded like from another time. Where time pressure had no reception, cherry blossom boogie emerged -- an album like a set Super 8 movie: flickering, yellowing, full of quiet accuracy. Dandelion honey sounds like someone has turned the pace out of pop music to give it room to breathe again. Guitar lines sneak through the window like sun rays, the bass is a patient narrator, the drums prefer to think in landscapes than in bars. The music of this Swiss instrumental band is a poetic slowdown. If you hear them, you will recognize fleeting shadows of Khruangbin, whose guitar lines seem adept at time travel. But dandelion honey opposes something of its own: a kind of alpine Zen surf, dreamy and yet precise. The term “retro” is aimed at nothing. What this music does is more archaeological. She digs up something that was spilled under layers of volume and time pressure. In some moments, dandelion honey reminds of the cinematic expanse of Tortoise, the wandering clarity of Yo La Tengo, the lonely landscapes through which Ry Cooder once sent his slide guitar. And so you stand before this music as before an old photo album in an attic: you know no one, but feel that it affects you. And if you experience dandelion honey live, dandelion honey -- Skylinekiss (Live at Walcheturm) finally understands that this music is more than a backdrop. With dream-shifting safety, the band modulates the pace, lets pieces flow, stall, expand like sun rays in the afternoon. Their concerts are happiness rooms -- somewhere between somnambulian transcendence and casual danceability. Especially the latter finds more space on the second album than on the debut record. This is exactly what makes the anticipation of the upcoming European tour so great: Because what dandelion honey succeeds in the studio, turns live into a moving picture. A concert like a time travel. And a band that has long been playing its place in the memory of the present.