Angelika Köhlermann 
Folklabor : The Slider In Advance (Ö,2008)***°
Folklabor (=“folk labour”) is a product led by software programmer Philipp Mold, in cooperation with vocalist, flutist Maria Augustin. With the first few tracks this sounded very much like a close cooperation with the singer, presenting a world of musical enjoyment of electronic folk mixed with song pop abilities, like songs after work on a farm, full of enjoyment of the making and after having felt satisfaction from their work.
Whenever the acoustic guitars lead, mixed with electric bass, multi-colourful acoustic-based, but processed, rhythms, and the electropop vocoder (or electronic voice) only accompanies little, and the warm feminine voice takes the lead with nice flute arrangements, the music has this sympathetic effect, and also the lyrics confirm often the place where they are supposed to have been made (with lyrics in German mostly, with a few simple sentences, but also with some English). But then the lyrics take no more participating part, and Philipp’s arrangements take over, as a solo trip made in the small room, and the rest of the farm sphere is entirely forgotten. This, of course, still has the same fine production, and ear to sounds and a pop happiness, but it also repeats its ideas more, so that only some vocal-less female background vocals is a bit little of participation on such tracks. Most sympathy for me goes to the underlying story that on the songs led by Maria mostly comes out best, elsewhere lingers on more in the background.
