Henrik – Faction

It's Friday afternoon and you're stuck in front of a blinking, lifeless screen waiting for the weekend to kick in. Surrounding you is inane, never-ending chatter that scurries from Katie Holmes' latest mutant-esque form to Sunday afternoon's prospective dinner like a rat gnawing its way through the frayed ends of your patience. Funny thing is, these seven hours are exactly the same as yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that yet, for some irrational reason, Friday's clock tick tocks with all the velocity of a snail making its way to a French restaurant.Somewhat tenuously (in link anyway), Henrik's Faction could be considered the sonic equivalent of the working week's final day . Punching in at twelve tracks that span three quarters of an hour, the Danish session musician-cum-solo artist's inaugural offering displays no obvious dissimilarities from the typical long-player resting atop your stereo. But once the first few bars of opener ‘Hey Ho!' radiate through the speakerbox, Old Father Time's creaky bones are shot still by a peal of stagnant chimes and repetitive, weak throated chants.This ethereal sense of space wriggles through to the wrinkled country twanging of ‘Any Old Day' - a downtrodden saunter of Alfie-like understatement that twinkles to slack-jawed, purring harmonies - and by the time ‘This Sound''s string-laden lament approaches the eardrums, seconds have transformed into hours and hours into days. Even ‘Try Me''s portly, Doves-aping bassline does little to progress the clock's fruitless advances, so caught up in laborious, emotionally scarred pleading is it.Heart-struck drifter ‘This Time' is a pivotal moment in this languid affair. A slowdancing slink of tranquil effects and comforting - if not stomach churning - proclamations ["I love you and you love this time"], it's a readymade closer that breezes off into the distance, leaving an ambient glow in those certain their forty five minutes are up . So when ‘About You Today''s forlorn strums bleat into the airwaves the forthcoming shock quickly subsides into sigh: Faction is no longer an album, it's a chore.In their own right, follow up trio ‘10 Seconds', ‘To Believe' and ‘Okay' are no doubt quant, picturesque numbers that flutter the spirits and file away at those prickly paws of doubt. But here, pitted at the tail end of this elongated brute, they're nowt but space-filling inconveniences that wave a red rag at the temper's bull like disposition. And once it's done, once it's finally over, all it takes is a quick look at the watch and a scratch of the head before you realise Faction was little more than a waste of precious time. 42%Henrik on MySpace