Test card tones: delicious, speaker-wobbling ones. Not
to mention sundry ear canal vibrations. It’s fractured
and over-compressed. Wisp’s music is alternately
illuminated by twilight and neon. The nasal North American
voice that catalyses Negions Fail is pure BoC.
No shame there. The impression endures up to the moment
that the hyperkinetic breaks kick in and roll forth
with gleeful abandon. Strike that, they trace precise
lines, like a well-versed dancer hopping, skipping and
jumping over cracked paving stones.
Closing Brydges, likewise, is all wavering
tones. Beats are crunchier than before, backed up like
giant’s feet in snow. The melody line is traced
out trippily like melting icicles bent by the Photoshop
smear tool... Progress is patient, ancient, but familiar.
The BoC meme is in full,
fluid effect. Not surprising it’s so viral given
the resonance of childhood, longing, nostalgia, loss
that we all feel at one time or another. Congratulations,
inaugurated by a brief good-natured conversation proceeds
on tippytoe melodies that take wing at the same time
as the drums. There’s a welcome sense of passage
and more than enough variation to maintain the attention.
The brief 1stop is so jaunty in a skeletal
sort of a way that it’s missed the moment it’s
gone.
With a title like Untethered it might be supposed that
the listener were lined up for six minutes of ambience.
That it fails to live up to its name and indulges in
beats from the one-minute mark onwards is no disappointment,
however. See In Rainbows is gentler, almost
wistful. Dead Streets is more frenetic and
shakes off the influence of the Scottish brothers for
some fractal speed. Steam City, All His
Might and North continue in similar fashion
– each a map of lovely parts, elements, hyper-rhythms.
NRTHNDR isn’t deafeningly original, but
it’s a fine series of exercises in loveliness
and makes for a highly pleasurable ride.
Colin Buttimer
4/5 |
