Croatian Amor - Love Means Taking Action (2016)

Love Means Taking Action' is the new album from the multifaceted Copenhagen-based artist Loke Rahbek under his alias Croatian Amor. It is the first full-length Croatian Amor recording since 2014's 'The Wild Palms,' a release that was made available on cassette for a single month, and only in exchange for a nude self-portrait.

'Love Means Taking Action' will receive a wider, conventional release on vinyl through Posh Isolation, on CD through Alter, and across digital platforms.

Since the inception of the project, Croatian Amor has dealt with a mixture of fiction and reality, often using real events and places as a platform for a largely fictional play. Where there is playfulness, there is revelation.

On 'Love Means Taking Action'—without a doubt the project's strongest work to date—the effect of the perpetual collaging of information is keenly felt. Short, unnerving moments appear with slick familiarity. Voices repeat and quietly glitch through tonal shifts. We are ushered along by the shuddering effect of the samples and field recordings on the pristine synthesis, with motifs and plot lines presented as quickly as they disintegrate. We are enticed to find comfort here but we are not guided through a space as with much ambient music.

The textures and terrains that 'Love Means Taking Action' present form an array of scenarios with what at times feels like a punishing degree of indifference to the listener. We are bluntly shown snippets of impassioned architectures. It is a process that draws the listener in through alienation. There is something in the way that the music and track titles progress which is not unlike the experience of submitting to social media news feeds, where love stories become the neighbours of civil wars and selfies, and reports from refugee camps are presented next to advertisements for lifestyle magazines.

'Love Means Taking Action' lets the fragmented motifs of fictions tenderly tug at reality’s patchwork veil.

In the artist's own words, 'Love Means Taking Action' is "twelve tracks of very human electronic music."