Caspar Milquetoast: Another Olive, Praefectus?

Caspar Milquetoast, the brainchild of Dutch musician Amani Mohed, released the eclectic mini-album We'll Have Tea in 2022, a collection of pleasantly confusing, dazzling miniatures. She stayed silent after that, only to resurface with a second helping just now. Another Olive, Praefectus? is about Pontius Pilate, grammar, card games, a doctor of ill repute, death, and much much more.

Mohed's music is like a scrapbook, a collage of sounds, tied together with her relaxed vocals. There is pop, folk and the harmonium of like-minded musician Stefan Breuer adds a little extra mustards on some of the tracks. She is a keen observer, always on the look-out for finding a new perspective she can incorporate into her private universe. Feel free to visit, and be prepared to get lost in a good way.

Caspar Milquetoast: We'll Have Tea

Caspar Milquetoast is the nom-de-plume of Dutch musician Amani Mohed. To call her debut EP We'll Have Tea eclectic would be a huge understatement. She crams so many ideas within the 20 minutes that it would take full bands years to match this outburst of creativity. Taking pointers from movies, books and a play, the tracks tell the tale from an undisclosed storyteller, as if Lewis Carroll has returned to Earth to become a musician. It is a maze where you can run into a woman shopping for clothes, an alien trying to make sense of human languages, and Mozart's adversary Salieri. Carmen Rueda added extra vocals on So Long, Giovanni, and Stefan Breuer added guitar, piano and drums on a couple of tracks.

She donned the name of a shy comic character created by H.T. Webster, but she has no reason at all to hide away from the world. We'll Have Tea is a great start of an unique voice who will be big name in the underground. Using cut-and-paste techniques, spoken word and pastoral melodies sitting comfortably next to noise rock, Mohed has created her own universe wherein anything goes. It's not chaos, however, but a musical jigsaw puzzle that comes without a picture of the finished product. It is up to the listener to connect to the dots.