Library L'Amour - Premier Caprice

Stroom's annual Valentine's Day release marks the occasion in the way they know best with this mysterious plume of synth-led ethereal romanticism. Library L'Amour are the duo of Yasmine Ixe and Richard Wenger, and these songs were said to have been written over the course of their three and a half year relationship. When those three and half years were exactly, well, i couldn't precisely say. This is the kind of greyscale, forlorn minimal synth music that a lot of mainland Europe has been expertly turning out for what seems like forever. The best thing you can say about Premier Caprice (what a perfect title btw) is that it's not easily timestamped, so perfect a realisation is it of that particular style of pernod and gitanes cafe culture elegance that Stroom has honed down the years. All four are winners here, but if i'm choosing, then the title track is the pick of the bunch for me, a dreamstate coquettish come-on with vaseline on its lens (if you take my meaning).