Seelenluft is a Swiss gentleman who dresses up as a trumpet-playing bunny. Since the Swiss are renowned for their idiosyncrasies (they did give the world the cuckoo clock, after all), it shouldn't be alarming that a man who dresses as a rodent would compose incidental music for a Swiss synchronized swimming team. While it's undeniable that the seven tracks on this EP are comprised largely of kitsch, we should learn to trust. After all, psychopathic drug lords and nefarious heads-of-state trust the Swiss to squirrel away their ill-gotten gains in no-questions-asked bank vaults.

During the years Beat Solèr (for Seelenluft is he) traipsed around the Zurich art underground-- trying on experimental soundscapes one day, and performance art the next-- he quietly amassed a vast library of 50s easy listening records. But since the performance art gigs never brought untold riches, Solèr let go of the pretentious posturing to become, in his words, "the conductor of a hard disk freeform orchestra."

In addition to his Seelenluft moniker, Solèr has adopted the persona of Silvercity-Bob, the aforementioned trumpet-playing bunny-man. Silvercity-Bob's tragic tale was told on Seelenluft's sophomore album, The Rise and Fall of Silvercity-Bob. Though Silvercity-Bob is supposed to have died at the close of that album (during a track called "Terrible Sound of Silence"), he's been resurrected in order to assist the Acapulco 11, a Zurich-based swim team dedicated to preserving the art of ludicrously splashing about. For such an utterly pointless pursuit, Solèr has produced a luscious downtempo soundtrack.

It's fraught with perils, soundtracking cheesy synchronized aqua-dance routines. In fact, I'm drizzled in my own panicky sweat, hallucinating Patrick Duffy as Man from Atlantis. Solèr helps me out, though: he's decided to surpass Luke Vibert & BJ Cole's funky tribute to 50's pedal steel lounge music, Start the Panic. While "Land-kür 1" borrows the sonar pulses and rimshots from Akotcha's chill-out gem, "Gosub," "Wasser-kür 1" tries to net the swooping glissandi of a pedal steel with a butterfly net of jaunty chords from an end-of-the-pier Wurlitzer organ. "Wasser-kür 2" opens with strings that shimmer even more shimmeringly than the ones Bent used on "Private Road." A talking drum that's been jabbering on since the beginning grows in intensity until a solo violin melody dumbfounds it (and us) with its serenity.

"Land-kür 2" wistfully recalls the more frantic drum-n-bass of Solèr's 1997 debut, Bellatrax. Amidst the pounding beats and analog synth sea-gull squarks, a guitar line, as undamaged by distortion as any of Jim Hall's splendors, wanders peacock-proud, keeping any potential mayhem well contained.

"The Weeping Bikini" incorporates a sample of the famous violin solo from "The Young Prince and the Young Princess" movement of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scherazade, and then challenges the violin with a hooch-fortified tenor sax. After both instruments engage in some tugging of hair and a few punches below the beltline, harmony is restored. And just in time, too, as the tenor sax has got to ride the Milt Jackson vibes of "Bademeister."

The EP closes with the "Music for the Stars" mix of "Wasser-kür 1," which toughens up the bass (to almost the Bowflexed musculature of Reprazent's "Brown Paper Bag"-- ooh! scary!), and piles on a very Ultramarine-ish speech and some analog squiggles. Of course, listening to some wise old cove prattle on about "the music of sun, of the stars, and the music of ourselves" has made us completely forget about the 11 portly ladies who we, in our stylishly exoticized reveries, have left alone to tread elegant water until a passer-by politely throws them some towels.

-Paul Cooper