Enlisting Berlin-based, Danish-born singer/songwriter Agnes Obel to participate in the popular artist-curated, U.K.-based compilation series Late Night Tales feels a little on the nose, as her austere, brooding, and icy/elegant chamber folk is already the perfect soundtrack for the wee hours of the morning. As expected, Obel has chosen a compelling set of tunes for her turn in the booth, and she wastes little time in setting the tone with Henry Mancini's "Evil Theme," an ominous exercise in pizzicato-heavy, late-'50s cinema-jazz that suggests wisps of smoke rising from ashtrays beaded over with late summer humidity and long trench coats casting shadows on dirty concrete. Everything bleeds into each other like a proper late-shift radio program, adding considerable heft to the already thick atmosphere. Obel ultimately shifts her attention from the '50s and '60s -- the inclusion of the tiki-breezy but undeniably creepy "Eden's Island" by fanciful hippie outlier (and composer of "Nature Boy") Eden Ahbez, provides a sly sonic counterpoint to some of the beatnik gloom -- tapping into everything from oddball electronic pop (Yello's "Great Mission") and diaphonic Eastern European choral music (Bulgarian Folklore Choir's "Pilentze Pee") to Krautrock (Can's "Obscura Primavera") and avant garde-classical (Alfred Schnittke's "Piano Quintet V." Peppered throughout are four of Obel's own pieces, the most engaging of which is a lovely rendering of beloved Danish folk song "Glemmer du.. så husker jeg," that like the rest of the 20-track set, feels like the soundtrack to a David Lynch-sponsored Ayahuasca retreat.
