Feverdreamt from Berlin started making music in early 2015: dark Asian-inspired melodies mingling with guitars, violins, and polyphonic vocals producing ambient soundscapes that felt like the shimmering desert, Arabian heat and a hopeless attempt to escape this atmosphere, all driven by Krautrock drum beats that aren’t shy of crossing the 10-minute mark. An occidental fantasy, far from reality.

Almost exactly five years later, a new album, Melantant, is about to drop. On this second album Feverdreamt, which is a project of Alexander Leonard Donat who is also in Vlimmer, Fir Cone Children, and WHOLE, has evolved into something new.

The Far East vibe is still hanging over each of the ten new songs, yet the Krautrock influence has made room for a clear electronic approach that is much more complex. Minimalistic, almost industrial beats turn the soundscapes into a dystopic direction.

In 2019, Feverdreamt doesn’t sound like a band reveling in an imagined past in the hot desert; it sounds like a bridging of melancholic memories with the beauty and the terror of our times. It has cooled down, become more noir, and yet it’s a romantic album for an uncertain present.

The Big Takeover is pleased to host the premiere of “Saije Daije”, a track off the album. The song is a representative of the two hearts beating in the body of Melantant. Bleak minimal beats and synths, forlorn violins and, in the chorus, a synthetic glockenspiel that intertwines with the lamenting, floating voice of Donat. A hypnotic ride on a magic carpet into the future.

Melantant is due April 12 on Blackjack Illuminist Records.

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