More reviews of "Tricolore" by Haiku Salut

Consequence Of Sound

Baroque-Pop-Folktronic-Neo-Classical sounds like the jammed-together genre labels a band would stick on its MySpace more in the interest of smart-assery than for any helpfully descriptive purpose. That’s why the first major revelation about U.K. trio Haiku Salut – the group that claims that heap of syllables – is that who they are couldn’t be any further off from a smug chuckle.

For their debut instrumental album Tricolore, Haiku Salut weave together a musical landscape where glitchy bits of electronica give way to Spanish guitars and glockenspiels. Instead of the electronic portions sounding cold or out of place in comparison with so many warm, stringed instruments and piano keys, they have a roundness of their own as if plucked from a little kid’s quirky computer game. It’s partly the depth created in the contrast between those elements that makes the album feel like a place where the listener can walk around for a while. “Leaf Stricken” is one of the best examples of that, with skittering electronics underneath laid back fingerpicking. The nervous energy of the former takes the song well past a vibe that’s merely pleasant. In that vein, “ll_ Lonesome George (Or Well, There’s No-one Like) _ll” takes a whimsical run at an out-of-control Merry Go Round style waltz.

While a word like “twee” occasionally threatens to overpower Tricolore’s little world, the solidly built layers of a song like “Train Tracks for Wheezy” shift focus to craftsmanship. It isn’t cute confection, it’s an amalgam of sounds that make more sense together than you might expect, much like the influences the band lists in interviews. They’ll name off French cinema and Japanese filmmakers, along with musicians like Yann Tiersen and múm. Tricolore owes much to the latter two – Tiersen’s Musette-heavy Amelie score in particular, but still feels like a strong synthesis of loved-things, digested and built into a space of its own.

Jason's Jukebox

Some of my favorite scenes in movies are forever intertwined with the music playing at the time. Thinking back to Ghost World, by the far the most touching scene was the end sequence where some very adult decisions and realizations about life are made. David Kitay’s Theme From Ghost World lends the scene the emotional weight needed to draw the viewer / listener in. The same thing could be said about the end scene of Donnie Darko while Michael Andrews & Gary Jules version of Mad World tugs at the heartstrings. Deryshire’s (that’s in England) Haiku Salut have created an impressive debut that serves as the soundtrack to an imaginary film.The band formed in 2010 and is made up of Sophie, Gemma, and Louise. The describe themselves as “Baroque-Pop-Folktronic-Neo-Classical-Something-Or-Other” which is about as apt of a description as I can think of. The music sounds like the perfect accompaniment to an old silent film – incorporating a healthy dose of accordion with electronic flourishes. There is an emotional resonance to the music that makes it hard to believe this is a debut.

You’ll Never Find a Rainbow If You’re Looking Down (highlights)

Sounds Like there’s a Pacman Crunching Away At Your Heart is an amazing song title, it’s a bonus that the song itself is equally impressive. Acoustic guitar and accordion slowly give way to an electronic beat that is positively infectious. It fades out into an instrumental coda that recalls some of the finer moments from Sufjan Stevens.

Los Elefantes gets things started off with melancholy piano before accordion enters, higher in the mix. An epic comic tragedy that leaves an impression on the listener. The song has an increased focus on percussion over the last-minute, providing a grand finale. Maybe the soundtrack to a scene from a film, or you can even provide your own memory for the music.

Glockelbar boasts a slightly ominous tone over top of an extremely catchy beat. This one would sound right at home on a Stereolab record. Hard to believe this is only a 2 minute track, so entrancing are the chimes & beats. Perfection – and make sure to check out the video too.

This album comes highly recommended. The music can serve as the soundtrack to long forgotten memories, good times, even those romantic nights from long ago.

Muso's Guide

Haiku Salut may not be the name on everyone’s lips but one thing is for sure, if this album somehow manages to get your time of day, it’s not likely something you will forget in a hurry. Rather than try to pin a style of six or seven hyphenated genre abbreviations to the Derbyshire trio, we will do our best to break down the intricacies of what their instrumental debut album Tricolore is all about – not particularly easy to do with something that is to an extent musically pretty unique to the UK in general.

Despite their uniqueness though, most of their influences are clearly recognisable albeit with each given its own twist. If you can imagine Benoît Charest doing a mash up with Ametsub, or Yann Tiersen’s Amelie OST being remixed with the earlier work of Mum, then you’re part way to understanding what Haiku Salut are about.

Their most intriguing influence though is that of Haruki Murakami – arguably the most experimental Japanese novelist to hit our shelves. Like his work, Tricolore inhabits the liminal zone between realism and fable, like Salvador Dali painting by music, the result is the same – surrealistic compositions by incredibly talented, classically trained artists. This is what transforms it from just pitching various musical styles together and hoping that it works; it’s what defines their album as true art and makes it work.

We’re in danger of sounding too pretentious here though which is something the album is not. Nor is it particularly complex to the ear. That said; don’t ask us what instruments or even non-instruments we hear in the short prelude ‘Say It’, because we don’t know. Second up on the album though is much more recognisable in what their using as the intro takes elegant form with a classically plucked Spanish guitar, a familiar Parisian street accordion motif and intricate piano – which alternate as starting points throughout the album. For the moment you could be forgiven for thinking that someone had slipped you a duff track listing as you glance down to find it titled ‘Sounds Like There’s A Pacman Crunching Away At Your Heart’. Gemma, Louise and Sophie’s intentions don’t take long to become very clear though. Pacman does indeed sonically pull up a seat beside the trio and soon the elegant form is accompanied with layers of idiosyncratic electronic loops and samples that are alternately quirky and beautiful.

From here on it’s almost like the album grows in confidence. A rake of imagery and musical ideas come thick and fast. On ‘Leaf Stricken’ there are crescendos retreating into softer, timid moments only to build up again, whilst tracks like ‘Los Elefantes’ and ‘Rustic Sense Of Migration’ syringe moving moments of melancholia with happiness.

‘Lonesome George (Or Well, There’s No-One Like)’ is like all their musical idioms – with the accordion at the forefront – packed into one happy-go-lucky track which comes off like a French waltz that you would find at a wedding or circus. The classical minimalist undertones that are sometimes masked on other tracks come to the fore on ‘Watanabe’ and ‘Six Impossible Things’ which are just a couple of the many intimate charms that Tricolore boasts.

Whilst Haiku Salut may not win any awards for creating the best album of the year, this work is certainly one of the most refreshing and surprising of the year. With an impressive command of idiom and subtlety it has all the attributes to lift and melt the heart in equal proportions and whilst it’s instantaneously enjoyable, there are many contours to be explored on repeated listens. So there you go, not Baroque/Pop/Folktronic/Neo-Classical/Accordion-Disco/Something-Or-Other, just a seemingly endless plethora of stark and lovely instruments splattered with some electronics, minimalist technique and often in the same charming cue.

Alturnative

Be honest – how many of you have wished your life had its very own soundtrack playing in the background? This no longer has to be a case of wishful thinking, thanks to an instrumental band made up of three young ladies – Louise, Sophie and Gemma – from Derbyshire who seem to play every instrument available to them in order to make the tantalising sound that is Haiku Salut and their second album ‘Tricolore’.

Haiku Salut used a variety of instruments including accordions, piano, digital works and ukuleles for their album Tricolore – the follow up to ‘How We Got Along After The Yarn Bomb’ – which was released on March 25th 2013 through the record label How Does It Feel To Be Loved. Tricolore has so far been met with positive feedback and has reined in a new gathering of followers eager to hear what could be the soundtrack to their everyday life – and it’s no wonder why they love this album.

The tracks are melodic and complementary to each other; the piano is elegant and the harmony of the different instruments gives most of the songs a sweet edge, the exception being Leaf Stricken which sounds like it could be played at a softies’ nightclub with a digital drum beat and percussion.

At times the instruments sound slightly jumbled together but they are smoothed over with a captivating background beat and a great piano accompaniment. Despite some parts sounding a little too full of instruments, you can hear how much effort has gone into this wonderful album and the intricacy the three musicians have applied to make each note balance each other, resulting in a catchy soundtrack that suits all moods.

The titles are quirky and nonsensical, beginning the cd with ‘Say It’ and rounding off the album with a cheeky title ‘No You Say It’; both tracks have a slightly space-y quality with digital beats, high piano chords, and in the case of ‘No You Say It’, a tempo change to a tune similar to work of the band Owl City.

If you’re looking for an instrumental band and album that combines melody, quirkiness and an accordion, Haiku Salut are a band that manage to combine instruments and tunes in a way you wouldn’t think possible, who describe themselves as a, “Baroque-pop-folktronic-neo-classical-something-or-other”, and will have you wishing they were following you around London belting out their upbeat tracks as you go about your business.

Earbuddy

Sounding in turns like a less aggressive Patrick Wolf and a more electro Arcade Fire, Haiku Salut’s Tricolore is charmingly warm and jubilant without being saccharine. However, it would be unfair to compare the album to anything else out there as it has a sound entirely its own, having more in common with the soundtrack to a French indie film than any of the band’s contemporaries in UK folktronica. It flits between imaginative electronic flourishes and continental-sounding acoustic moments, creating an engaging soundscape of what the band themselves describe as “Baroque-Pop-Folktronic-Neo-Classical-Something-Or-Other”.

Haiku Salut have cited traditional folk as an influence along with French film soundtracks and ’80s computer game soundtracks. These influences couldn’t be more evident across the LP’s 12 tracks, especially in the way that the album avoids vocals throughout. It makes do with instruments such as “accordions, ukuleles, glockenspiels, pianos”, according to the band’s website, as well as the “loopery and laptopery” which results in the ‘computer game’ elements of the LP.

“Six Impossible Things” is an especially impressive piece of folk music, as emotive and human as anything from Arcade Fire’s famously powerful debut, Funeral. ”Glockelbar” is another standout track, plaintive accordions contrasting the rattling electronic elements which are presumably the track’s namesake. Penultimate track “Train Tracks for Wheezy”, featuring a Little Orchestra, is undoubtedly one of the most complex tracks of the LP, flaunting a suitably majestic brass and strings finale.

Tricolore sounds like watching a rainy day from inside a log cabin or roasting marshmallows over a campfire. Its many disparate elements come together to form a debut LP that sounds at once childlike in its relentlessly open and earnest tone — its thick textures woven through with the homely echoes of the accordion – and incredibly sophisticated in its approach to composition, an expected outcome of the collaborative efforts of Haiku Salut’s three talented, multi-instrumentalist members. The exciting debut is sure to catch the attention of anyone keeping an eye on independent music in the UK.

In Your Speakers

Tricolore is an interesting record. Released in late March on the How Does it Feel to be Loved label, Tricolore is the first full length release from the Derbyshire-based trio of Louise, Sophie and Gemma, a group of musicians collectively known as Haiku Salut who use “accordions, ukeleles, glockenspiels, pianos, loopery and laptopery” to produce “Baroque-pop-folktronic-neo-classical-something-or-other” music, which is all just a fancy way of saying “a few musicians who mash together a lot of different instruments to make subdued instrumental music.” But all this, while informative, doesn’t say much about what makes this album interesting. What makes Tricolore an interesting record, in my opinion, is that depending on how you listen to it, this can either sounds like carefully pieced together collection of songs, each precisely made to express an individual idea or emotion, or a haphazardly thrown together grab bag of demos made by someone having a bit too much fun with Garageband. But both unfortunately and luckily (respectively), the majority of Haiku Salut’s debut LP falls somewhere in between.

In this way, and several others, Tricolore is an album of battling opposites. There’s the aforementioned feeling of precise thought and lawless garbling, as well as a comparison to be made between Haiku Salut’s use of crazy looped electronics on the one hand and simple acoustic or woodwind instruments on the other. Though some songs, like the tremendously beautiful “Watanabe,” stick mainly with real instrumentation, others, like borderline personality disorder-stricken “Leaf Stricken,” mix the two. Sometimes this works out quite well and Haiku Salut finds themselves with a moment of music that feels very innovative and exploratory, yet still grounded in basic notions of musical simplicity. Similarly, the album’s real opener (if you disregard the 30 second “Say It,” which you definitely can) “Sounds Like There's A Pacman Crunching Away At Your Heart” goes in and out of electro-noise rock and acoustic soft rock with intermittent moments of both success and failure. The album’s closer “No, You Say It” is also very electro heavy, in fact electro-heavy enough that you almost wouldn’t be surprised to hear it at your next rave—it’s a seriously excited song that works as a solid closer to an album with plenty of ebb and flow.

Along with this instrumentation dichotomy, there’s also something to be said for what feels like somewhat of a directional shift between the A-side and B-side of the album. Separated by the somewhat helpful delineator “Haiku Interlude #1,” Tricolore’s A-side is much more childish, skittish, and playful than the B-side, which generally sounds a bit more focused, formal, and grown-up—almost as though the two halves of the album could serve as soundtracks for two very differently themed movies. It’s not as though the album necessarily feels disjointed of that the first few songs are childish. Rather, there is a tempered focus found in songs like “Rustic Sense Of Migration” and “Train Tracks For Wheezy” that point to the development of a band that isn’t just fooling around with a computer, but is actually thinking carefully about the music they’re making.

These separations aren’t too surprising for a group’s first full-length release, and it’s reasonable enough to give them time to figure out what they want to do. Of course, a band this talented shouldn’t limit their ideas or creative potential for fear of making too big of a misstep, especially this early on in their career. But if Haiku Salut were able to take all their musical energies and focus them in one direction, rather than two or three, their ceiling is high.

Fractured Air

Haiku Salut are a Derby-based trio who create gorgeous indie-pop instrumental opuses. To categorize this highly talented set of musicians is a tall feat. The twelve instrumental cuts on debut album, ‘Tricolore’ utilizes a plethora of instrumentation, ranging from accordions, ukeleles, glockenspiels to piano, guitar and electronic looping. A large sonic palette is drawn from that paints a pastoral landscape of fallen leaves, towering trees and singing birds. ‘Tricolore’ is a joyous and celebratory affair with each plucked guitar note, swirling piano melody and accordion waltz. The album artwork perfectly embodies the music of Haiku Salut, where leaves of vivid colours – orange, blue, brown, yellow, red – adorns the white background. Similarly, the unique blend of music contains many shades and textures that endlessly reveal new meanings and truths.

My first introduction to Haiku Salut was their single, ‘Los Elefantes’, released as a free download back in early Spring. The piece begins with delicate solo piano music that conjures up timeless sounds of Erik Satie, Gonzales and Yann Tiersen. Moments later, accordion is added that evokes the breathtaking plains of the French countryside. Waves of electronic pulses, percussion and double-bass forms a sumptuous groove to bring ‘Les Elefantes’ to a dramatic close. A similarly dramatic feel is etched across the sonic canvas of ‘Lonesome George’ (Orwell, There’s No-One Like). The frantic tempos of the accordion-led waltz is closer in feel to Eastern European, where Balkan folk music serves the song’s blueprint.

The album’s centerpiece is undoubtedly ‘Watanabe’. Two layers of piano melodies -played several octaves apart – wonderfully grace the sound clouds. The intricate arrangement brings another record to the forefront of my mind, namely Musette’s ‘Drape Me In Velvet’, released this year on the Häpna label. This sonic marvel – in a similar fashion to ‘Tricolore’ – is divine instrumental music that never ceases to amaze and enlighten. ‘Rustic Sense Of Migration’ consists of piano, guitar, glockenspiel, percussion and accordion. To witness the construction of each layer of instrumentation is to unravel each molecule of your heart’s pore.

‘Six Impossible Things’ is a tour de force that recalls the modern-day luminaries of Colleen and múm. A fragile guitar-led melody drifts like early morning mist before cascading accordion notes rise to the foreground. ‘Leaf Stricken’ is reminiscent of early múm records with its smooth laptop glitches, colourful guitar tones and warm piano. ‘Tricolore’ is a rare treasure waiting to be discovered. Seek it out on the London-based label, How Does It Feel To Be Loved. Also available is the band’s debut EP ‘How We Got Along After The Yarn Bomb’.

When You Motor Away

Haiku Salut constructs instrumental indie pop from classical, folk, electronic and experimental elements. And I urge you not to reject sampling the charms of their LP, Tricolore, even if some of those elements are not found among your usual musical fare. This is music played with intelligence, passion, craft and wit. The players are capable of noodling on small scale, and blasting with wide-screen cinematic grandeur. Without the need for lyrics they can convey love, confusion and sadness. Well, they do have an assist with song titles such as "Sounds Like There's A Pacman Crunching Away At Your Heart" (ouch, I've been there). Instrumentation includes pianos, glockenspiels, accordions, ukuleles, and electronics. One of the revelations is how well the electronic contributions mesh with and complement the more traditional instruments, while adding an element of playfulness. Tricolore is a promising debut from an inventive band, and I expect we will hear more good things from them in the future.

Scene Point Blank

To say Haiku Salut are an odd ensemble would fall several metres short of the mark, judging by their 2013 release Tricolore.
Their music has influences from all over the map, unifying elements of indie, post-rock, electronic music, and even baroque pop. Their compositions, largely instrumental, rarely conform to expectations, with each piece taking more twists and turns than can be kept track of. Yet despite the confusing exterior, the album has an inescapably intriguing atmosphere about it. By virtue of the unexpected choices in instruments and style, each song is designed to pique your interest, to the point where hearing one track means you'll likely listen to the whole album by accident.

The whole album sounds kitschy, but incidentally so--Haiku Salut sound like they just so happened to stumble upon the magical unifying element of musical enjoyment. They deserve credit for producing an album that not only catches the listener off guard, but keeps her on her toes until the very end. Tricolore is like nothing I've ever heard, and I mean that to be a profound compliment. You definitely need to give this album a listen.

File Under

Als er ooit een huisband voor het muzikale museum Speelklok te Utrecht heeft bestaan is het Haiku Salut wel. Ik zie een artist in residence-reeks voor me. Band aan de slag met al die stokoude pierementen, speeldoosjes, en zo verder. Voorlopig toert Haiku Salut nog gewoon door hun eigen Engelse velden, waar hun tinkelende pastorale melodieën ook prima passen, als regenbuitjes op hobbithuisjes. De groep heeft goed geluisterd naar de god van dit soort zoete instrumentale soundtrack-schetsen: Yann Tiersen. Gelukkig duiken er her en der ook synths en glitchende beats op, voor een welkome IJslandse touch. "Sounds Like There's A Pacman Crunching Away At Your Heart" kon dan weer een liedje van Tunng zijn, en "Six Impossible Things" zal de fans van Beirut bijzonder bekend voorkomen. Vocalen mis je ook op zulke poppy momenten volstrekt niet. Wel ontbreekt er een gezonde dosis echte melancholie, iets waarin de vergelijkbare Rickard Jäverling juist in excelleert. Op het in alle opzichten alleraardigste Tricolore neigen de uiterst minutieus in elkaar gestoken deuntjes soms naar machinaal. Een beetje ruis had voor meer opwinding kunnen zorgen.

Folk Radio

Folktronica – oxymoron or budding art form? Although far from new to ours ears, the idea of electro-acoustic music is still maverick enough to set a few Arran sweaters itching. The standard hoisted by Tunng and others gathers more and more support, with established names such as Lau and King Creosote developing the form. Another shining light among these names is Haiku Salut. The Derbyshire trio are about to embark on a tour of interesting spaces with Lau and also release their singularly earnest and engaging debut album Tricolore on November 18th.

Haiku Salut (Gemma Barkerwood, Louise Croft and Sophie Barkerwood) draw inspiration from many quarters; like-minded artists, film scores and Japanese impressionistic literature all make a contribution. The sound that these sources inspire, however, belongs emphatically to Haiku Salut. The gently jarring repetitions of the opening electronic overture Say It, give way to the soft acoustics of a slightly impatient guitar dancing with piano and accordion in the beautifully entitled Sounds Like There’s A Pacman Crunching Away At Your Heart. And it feels very much like just that. As the electronic chords and repetitions come into play and the wee yellow guy starts roaming around your consciousness, it feels like Three Cane Whale discovered 8 bit gaming and they strolled off into the woods together.
Leaf Stricken delivers an audio/visual feast of swirling autumn colours, and in a perfect example of the contrasts that are one of the many delights of this album, Six Impossible Things opens as a summery stroll on strings, with detuned bass notes blundering around like a drunken bumble bee until the stroll moves on to a bandstand in the park. The piano / accordion mix of Los Elefants is equally evocative as it spins towards its electronic conclusion.

Other memorable highlights include Lonesome George (Orwell, There’s No-One Like), in which a very continental sounding George Orwell sits somewhere along the French / Spanish border, secretly stock-piling tension and drama. And although this album should never be regarded as a collection of highlights (take it in as a whole – you won’t regret it) Train Tracks For Wheezy (Featuring A Little Orchestra) stands just that little bit more proud; a dreamy opening with a bass so laid back it’s horizontal and Cinematic simplicity in irresistible monochrome bursting into blazing Technicolor, for a final sixty seconds that will fill your heart.

Not everything here is, on the surface, as complex. Glockelbar is a gentle and hypnotic two minute glockenspiel exploration that delivers far more in terms of texture than is immediately apparent. The closing response to the opening track, No, You Say It, takes up the theme and plays around some, closing the album on an emphatically electronic note.

As we mentioned last month, Haiku Salut have also contributed to the Lau – Remixed collection, with a striking and habit-forming remix of Race The Loser’s Torsa. In performance the band are mesmerizing; winning their way to a place on the Green Man Rising stage at the Green Man festival, Haiku Salut provided a spell-binding performance, and their acclaimed Lamp Show has been delighting London audiences. Lau fans who are lucky enough to catch them on tour over the coming month will find Haiku Salut a perfectly chosen counterpoint, and fans of Haiku Salut will no doubt be pleased to catch Lau live too.

Far from avoiding attaching a label to their music, Haiku Salut describe themselves as Baroque-Pop-Folktronic-Neo-Classical-Something-Or-Other. Well, it’s good to find your niche. On the face of it we have an album of folktronica, but Tricolore can’t be taken at face value. Far more than syncopated repetition of 8 bit beeps and crunches, there are depths of colour and emotion here to set the imagination wandering (or wondering) and the spine tingling. This is an absolute gem of an album.

More Than The Music

Whether you think of them as a folk-electronic threesome or an alt-pop mini orchestra, Haiku Salut are not a band easily forgotten once you’ve heard the opening notes. Tricolore is the first album from this lovely lot, with each song not accompanied by what you’d expect to be elusive, pixie like vocals – The album is unlike anything I’ve heard, except perhaps Yann Tiersen live at Green Man Festival in 2012.

The Amelie soundtrack this album is not, yet the likeness is effortlessly detected. Each song opens with a different instrument – with short opening track Say It focussing predominantly on the xylophone and following track Sounds Like There’s a Pacman Crunching Away At Your Heart enlisting a beautiful acoustic guitar and accordion ensemble with a flicker of piano, just to break your heart into a few tiny pieces.

Though don’t be fooled; these girls are not to be reckoned with in today’s modernised, EDM world full of synth-obsessed teenagers. A minute into the second track, the ‘pacman’ melody kicks in with a force that overrides the subtlety of earlier harmonies. The track is one to listen to in the dying sun with a drink in hand and good company.

Los Elefantes really strikes at their French inspirations, while diving further into an eclectic mix of World music and synth-pop. The repetitive beat resembles something you’d be likely to hear on one of the BBC’s ‘what’s hot’ radio skits. It’s an acquired taste.
Further down the list, Watanabe, Train Tracks for Wheezy and Six Impossible Things grasp beautiful, hypnotic tunes with melodies encasing a sadness – the first and last hints of melancholy throughout the album – that I relate to, as any normal human would.

The album would definitely work as a soundtrack, as Tricolore appears to emit a story that can vary for each listener. This is reinforced through the short, sharp Haiku Interlude #1, where you’re led to the next scene as in any perfectly timed film directed by Michel Gondry. The album’s fusion of old and new, the mind-boggling interaction between electronic sounds and the natural tune of a hand-held instrument proves to take the listener on a really quite extraordinary trip.

Concluding song No, You Say It ends Tricolore with a reply to the opening track in terms of grammar and tune. The song carries on from the first as if it had never escaped to any other part of the album. It leaves you questioning if you ever truly did hear anything but one, very long and skilfully generated song.

Their music has the effect you’d expect from a yoga-induced whale song session or a tape of heavy, falling rain – your imagination goes wild, while your body relaxes into nothingness. And in the final moments of Tricolore, one is left excited and awestruck by the prospect of what Haiku Salut will deliver next.

The Arts Desk

Derbyshire’s Haiku Salut probably aren’t dyed-in-the-wool new agers, but the reissue of their album – making it available widely for the first time – suggests they wouldn’t run too far if someone suggested crystals had energies they could draw from. This is open-minded music. The seam they tap into is organic, yet they employ minimal colour from electronica.

That implies that Haiku Salut are what might have been labelled folktronica, the clunky designation which did nothing to hamper Tunng or Beth Orton but did suggest some laboratory-born hybrid which would always fall between two stools. Handily, Tricolore – named for the three primary colours – sits apart from either folk or electronica despite nodding towards both.

If Haiku Salut have any brethren it would be the Icelandic band mu˜m, another outfit concerned with making the minimal into the whole without sacrificing intimacy. This is a lovely album which speaks quietly. Indeed, Haiku Salut do not speak on stage. The music is enough.

Bearded

It’s hard to to think of a more fitting title for this debut full-length outing from Haiku Salut. Gemma Barkerwood, Louise Croft and Sophie Barkerwood wear their Francophone influences on their stripey sleeves, but also revel in bringing together different hues to form something whole and with a unique identity.

Now re-released after a limited release earlier this year, this album marks something of a departure from the crystalline indie-pop usually associated with the excellent HDIF label (which, in the past, has brought us the likes of Butcher Boy, Pocketbooks and Antarctica Takes It!) - weaving together piano, glockenspiel, wheezing accordion, coquettish rhythms and analogue synth sounds to create a giddy, ambitious and accomplished record. ‘Sounds Like There’s a Pacman Crunching Away At Your Heart’ in particular combines these elements to great and bizarrely poignant effect, flitting from bruised, pastoral folk to 8-bit torch song to the dance floor, before a mournful, piano-led denouement.

Elsewhere, each of these elements takes its turn, with the magpie-like three-piece dabbling in near-baroque piano (‘Watanabe’), lilting Britfolk (‘Rustic Sense of Migration’) and the sound of an autumnal day in the Derbyshire countryside (‘Train Tracks For Wheezy’). Tricolore sounds at its best when they’re using very different textures as part of one broad palette - ‘Glockelbar’ melds music box melody and pulsing beats with simmering electronics, like Dosh going hill-walking in rural England, and single ‘Los Elefantes’, with its melancholy piano and accordion, channels Yann Tiersen before going off in another direction entirely.

The record is book-ended by ‘Say It’ and ‘No, You Say It’ - the former’s half-minute sets the tone for a gentle, off-kilter suite of songs, while the latter reprises that opening melody and pushes it as far as it can go. It’s a beatific concoction of picked melody, twinkling music box sounds and quietly skittering rhythms, which slowly build until the half-way point, where the song evolves into thumping folk-trance. A delightfully unexpected coda, it underlines the imagination and scope here - that the trio shift gear so readily without it sounding jarring is a rare achievement indeed.

There’s a freewheeling eclecticism and playfulness at the heart of Tricolore, resulting in a joyous amalgam of sounds and contrasts. With their duality of organic and often rustic instrumentation, combined with carefully layered electronic textures, Haiku Salut often recall the digital folk of Tunng’s earliest output, as well as Tiersen’s soundtrack compositions, but have forged their own wonderful debut brimming with ideas and great musicianship. It’s a magical collection of songs, and one you should seek out immediately.

Inner Monologue

Totally original, Brilliantly esoteric and deliciously Francophilic throughout (as the title suggests) Tricolore occasionally feels like it might have been at home on the soundtrack to Amelie with twee accordion and delicate piano refrains, but these deceptively acoustic threads don’t tell the full story. Washed through with glitched beats and loops, the trio’s electronic side is just as adept.

Nothing remains serious for long within the world of Haiku Salut and consequently every last track on Tricolore is full of childlike glee and imbued with an irrepressible playfulness that makes it an absolute joy to listen to. What’s important is that this record sounds like it was fun to make – and that’s a totally infectious quality to have captured on tape. Effortlessly charming and endearingly imperfect this first effort from the threesome is easily one of the most instantly loveable albums of recent years.

Lira

Ibland målar musiken upp en skir, pastoral idyll. Ibland låter det som isländska gruppen Amiina. Eller som musiken på ett parisiskt kafé – Yann Tiersen, som gjorde musiken till filmen Amelie från Montmartre, är en av gruppens influenser. Dragspelet är en tydlig ledtråd, och har delvis varit orsak till att de har jämförts med svenska Detektivbyrån.

Det handlar om instrumentalgruppen Haiku Salut, som varken är från Japan eller från Frankrike, som namnet kan antyda, utan är en ovanlig och charmerande, ung, kvinnlig trio från grevskapet Derbyshire i England.

Gruppen består av multiinstrumentalisterna Gemma och Sophie Barkerwood och Louise Croft. De beskriver själva sin musik som “baroque-pop-folktronic-neo-classical-something-or-other”, vilket de framför på bland annat dragspel, gitarr, ukulele, piano, klockspel och slagverk, med hjälp av den del loopande och laptopande!

Musiken har ett inneboende, lekfullt vemod och en självklar käckhet, ofta manifesterat i repetitiva fraser och ett efterhängset techno-rytmiserande. Det är en sorts musikalisk naivism, som både bedårar och avväpnar; en låt “behövde en trumpet”, så Gemma lärde sig att spela, för den enda låtens skull. Varje låt har sin lilla egenhet – och priset går till Watanabe, där de tre unga damerna spelar sexhändigt på ett piano.

Prog

Angst remains an ever valuable commodity in the rock world, so welcome Derbyshire’s Haiku Salut whose debut album shines a rainbow-coloured beam of unadulterated happiness across the sky without once having to resort to words. If this is setting off your twee detector already, don’t panic. Tricolore has charm to spare, but it never becomes sickly. Electronic loops and samples sound atypically bucolic, opener Say It twinkles away like a galaxy. Acoustic guitars, accordions, trumpets, pianos and glockenspiels in hand, the band waltz, they swoon, they skip and (hell, why not) they even polka.

It’s the kind of music made for exploring the woods, making dens and reliving childhood summers, warm and beautiful and searching for joy in every corner. But best of all, there’s no one really like them out there at the moment. Sure, they share extra-terrestrial bleeps and electro-dreams with The Postal Service, alongside the glitchy warmth of Iceland’s mum, the marching, Mediterranean, brassy antiquity of Beirut and even flashes of Ravel. But this is classically influenced dreampop that’s as English as Victorian pictures of fairies at the bottom of the garden, and just as magical.

Mojo

The annual Green Man Rising festival battle of the bands has developed a reputation for producing musical surprises. This year, Haiku Salut proved to be the revelation, dismissing any scepticism this correspondent felt for their name with a set of whirling, neo-classical, folk-tronic skronk. Challenging yet comforting, Tricolore, their self-produced debut album, reconfirms the fact that multi-instrumentalists Sophie Barker, Louise Croft and Gemma Wood are a singular musical force. Despite their indie rock past in The Deirdres, they cite Yann Tiersen as a prime influence, and it shows. Melodicas, accordions, glockenspiels, ukuleles, ill-sounding horns, nimbly picked guitars, laptops and electronic loops animate the likes of Sounds Like There’s A Pacman Crunching Away At Your Heart and the beauteous Six Impossible Things. In fact, Tricolore feels like an imaginary soundtrack. Quite what the film itself is all about is entirely down to you.

End Of The Year poll mentions

A Closer Listen

Accordion, glockenspiel, trumpet, drumsticks and more add up to an ebullient tone on this fully-fledged debut album, recorded in the middle of two EPs. This is the sound of confidence and fun, with a wink, a smile and a dob of sass.

For The Rabbits

What can you expect from a debut album? Well based on this, an awful lot! Perhaps one of the less well known albums on the list, but one that’s received almost unanimously stunning reviews, and you know what it couldn’t be any more deserved. The all female, instrumental 3-piece from Derby have made one of the most unique and intriguing album of the year. Part Amelie era Yann Tiersen, part traditional English folk band. Blasts of accordion, tinkles of glockenspiel and a whole lot of what sounds like pretty much every other instrument they could find. I’ve never heard anything quite like it, and in doing that they’ve made one of the most magical album of the year! Buy it! Buy it now!

The Null Device

The début full-length album from the band that formed from one half of The Deirdres treads a far less rambunctious, and slightly less twee, path. Eschewing the handclaps-and-glockenspiel mayhem of indiepop, Haiku Salut venture at times into cinematic chamber-pop reminiscent of Yann Tiersen (Los Elefantes, Lonesome George), Múm-style glitchy dreampop (Leaf Stricken) and the more pastoral ends of the post-rock spectrum (Rustic Sense of Migration), alternating between piano, classical guitar, various percussion, accordion and electronic beats.

Muzik Discovery

Instrumental trio Haiku Salut's debut isn't wanting for personality: the group packs in a street orchestra's worth of instruments and genres over twelve tracks. What I appreciate most about Tricolore, though, and what makes it more than the sum of its parts, is a small bookend: the album opens with "Say It," a haunting melody played on a warbly synth keyboard, and closes with a response--"No, You Say It"--where the melody recurs before spinning out of control into a euphoric four-on-the-floor dance ditty. In its wild ambition, Tricolore isn't just trying to be unique; it's razing old conventions to the ground and making way for new ones.

I Prefer Their Older Stuff

Describing themselves, with tongue firmly in cheek, as Baroque-Pop-Folktronic-Neo-Classical, this debut from the Derbyshire trio is a delicate, instrumental, glitchy little beauty! Could fit beautifully soundtracking the next Jean Pierre Jeunet movie!

Sweeping The Nation

"Baroque-Pop-Folktronic-Neo-Classical-Something-Or-Other", the Derbyshire multi-instrumentalist trio call this sound, which does this bit out of a job. You might also add a twisted about version of post-rock's use of slow build, repetition and instrumental flourishes, deployed here so seemingly clashing parts - a fingerpicked acoustic, an accordion, an 8-bit electronic sample - gradually coalesce into form fitted shape, complex layers developing layers ande depth that can be as much floating and euphoric as pinpricks in existing melodic structure. Often incapable of sitting still, the loops and flourishes serve to both develop its baroque nature and then pull it apart. It's an album that knows its touchstones, whether Yann Tiersen, Haruki Murakami or Wes Anderson, but really sounds like nobody else.

Ears For Eyes

I bought this one after reading the unanimous praise it was getting in the press, it cheers me up no end.

Happy Fingers Productions

The members of Haiku Salut clearly have a large record collection. ‘Tricolore’ is a work that can’t be pigeonholed into a single genre. It’s not that the songs are detached from each other, much the opposite, it’s that every song shoehorns in a whole host of disassociated influences to create one beautiful whole. On the one hand the music recalls the playful organic sound of Penguin Cafe Orchestra. On the other it lends ideas from experimental ambient electronic artists such as Helios and Mum. There’s also an undoubted nod towards traditional folk music and twee pop. Despite the multiple styles ‘Tricolore’ sounds remarkably uncluttered. It’s a homely, dainty album, as fragile as a snowflake falling from a tree on a winters day. That it’s the debut from the all female three-piece is really quite staggering. Haiku Salut have arrived fully formed.

In Forty

A truly unique record, brimming with atmosphere and untold stories.

See Inlay For Details

Haiku Salut’s debut appeared as if from nowhere. An all-but-dormant but much beloved label announced at the start of the year that they’d signed the band and that the album was immediately available. Knowing nothing of them in the slightest but having total faith in the label, an order was duly placed with little expectation.

If the band had been hyped for months, my expectations would have been more than surpassed.

Tricolore is an extraordinary piece of work. Part Yann Tiersen (hence, one assumes, the Gallic title), part eclectic Japanese videogame soundtrack, part classically trained string trio, it’s an album that shouldn’t exist, let alone written by three girls from Derby.
It’s a truly beautiful listen. More so than any other record on this list, it’s an album that absolutely bowls this listener away with its intimacy, beauty, intricacy, and sheer talent. You don’t expect such a classic orchestration to be occasionally accompanied by little electronic glitchy melodies, and you sure don’t expect an instrumental album to paint as vivid pictures as Tricolore does.

'Watanabe', listened to in the snowfall of January, moved me more than anything else this year. That the final track loops back perfectly with the first has meant that, more often than not, a single listen has been impossible. It is something which begs to be listened to over and over again and doesn't ever fatigue or bore.

It’s such a great album. Albert Camus (famously quoted on Scott 4) said that “a man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.” I grew up with Yann Tiersen, Neil Hannon, similar orchestral pop, and the Nintendo Game Boy. Haiku Salut feel like the modern amalgam of all those loves from times past and I truly love them for it.

Urban 75

They sound like they should be French or Spanish, but are actually from the East Midlands. It’s a smorgasbord of delights, folky, ambient, and just darn funky. Hints of AotY favourites Beirut come through, making Haiku Salut easily the most popular new band on this years list.

To buy "Tricolore" by Haiku Salut go here