easyFun - Deep Trouble (PC Music)

On the penultimate episode of Master Chef Junior a few weeks ago, two contestants were eliminated and unable to enter the finals. Before they left, Gordon Ramsey said some encouraging words while dramatic stock music played over flashbacks of their key experiences on the show. I got teary-eyed but felt sort of pathetic. Am I this easily manipulated? Do I even care about these kids? Isn’t most of this show scripted? A week later, Deep Trouble dropped and I immediately thought of that scene. It, along with this three song EP remind me of why I ever loved PC Music in the first place. Stuff like GFOTY’s “Don’t Wanna / Let’s Do It“ intentionally tries to capture pop at its most bizarre a la My Teenage Dream Ended while something like Kane West’s cover of “Archangel” is absurdly humorous. Both of these elements are largely missing in pop music but what really keeps me coming back to PC Music is the way it channels teen pop’s wide-eyed, idealistic views of life and love.  I engage with PC Music in a way I do a lot of other genres but there’s a strong, empathetic response I have to their songs that reminds me most of Ark Music Factory and the songs they create for children. It just feels “authentic”, at least relatively. But despite the inauthentic sheen of PC Music’s aesthetics, their artists’ embrace of “unfashionable” pop sounds has a similar way of breaking down my cynicism (see also: bvdub). And when expertly produced, like the three tracks on here by Finn Keane, their lyrics feel more sincere than most of the chart-topping manufactured pop from around the world.

On “Laplander”, lyrics about a crumbling romance culminate in celebratory shouts. It’s surprisingly empowering, and all of its cliché lyrics only echo the universality of such an experience. “Full Circle” also concerns an unrequited love but appropriately flips the roles. If the instrumentation and teeny bopper vocalizing didn’t already conjure up thoughts of middle school infatuation then the specific mention of a “locker room” will further cement that idea. For how silly a lot of our teenage drama may seem in retrospect, the emotional intensity was still real. “Even though we’re meant to be / why don’t you need me?” may sound like something from an immature adolescent’s diary but it’s poignant in its naivety, the sort of truth only kids can so candidly exclaim. The first easyFun EP was aggressively colorful, a tongue-in-cheek collage of Glass Swords panache and grooves. Its only use of vocals was accessory but the EP showed how Keane has a knack for sound design. Deep Trouble is a bit more straightforward but it’s just as vibrant and shows how well he can extract unbridled joy from each saccharine blip. Most exemplary of this is “Fanta”, the only song on the EP whose lyrics are a bit difficult to parse. A minute into the song, Keane strips the song down and the lyrics that are clear—”you’re my fantasy”, “baby you don’t look at me”, “once in your life”—are imbued with a pained aching that didn’t exist when we heard them earlier. All in all, easyFun’s Deep Trouble is a reminder of how PC Music’s brash approach of capturing various emotions can feel so invigorating. More importantly, it’s the most fun 11 minutes from any artist this year.

Drake - If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late (Cash Money)

Stream If You're Reading This It's Too Late on Spotify

Nothing Was The Same opened with “Tuscan Leather”, a track that functioned more as a thesis on the Toronto rapper than a simple glimpse of what the album had to offer sonically. On it, we saw three different sides of Drake: Drake the braggart, Drake the big dreamer, and Drake as one appreciative of his relationships. These three things feed into each other, however, and it was appropriate that the beat was made from the same song (Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing”) flipped three times. Drake’s always been open about his influences so if anything, his “tough guy” shtick should be seen as a tribute to his heroes, especially on an album with multiple Wu-Tang references and lines from one of Biggie’s biggest hits. But at the same time, it’s hard to gauge how much of his “worst behavior” stems from that or his need for approval from others, be it his hip hop contemporaries or Courtney from Hooters on Peachtree. As a result, Whitney Houston singing “Don’t you dare walk away from me / I have nothing […] If I don’t have you” feels apt because it could be applied to all these different sides of Drake. Let’s play a game: if he sang those lyrics himself, what would it sound like—a vulnerable confession? A tactless demand? A bit of both? The answer doesn’t matter as much as the fact that it would sound like, and make you feel, something. That it’s unsurprising for a Drake review in 2015 to be, at least partially, a character study attests to how how his music is inseparable from his persona. When Drake opens If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late by nonchalantly claiming  ”if I die, I’m a legend”, it sounding like a troll or problematic to certain people is only more proof of his complicated, and conflicted self. It’s the same Drake as always, just maybe not the one you like. In other words, it’s Drake feat. Drake, and we get a lot of that across these 17 tracks.

If You’re Reading is split into two halves, the first of which moves at a slow, murky pace. It has the same ethereal atmosphere that’s defined his previous releases, just noticeably darker. 40’s signature sound shines through, even in the hands of other producers. Long gone, however, is Drake’s soft crooning; this is Drake at his most unapologetically serious. And for the first six songs, he utilizes specific signifiers—moody piano melodies, snippets of Jamaican voices, samples of Ginuwine’s “So Anxious”—to reinforce that he means everything that he says. The nuisance of haters on “Energy”? He’s over them. Instead, he’s spending his time mastering his craft and striving for the success he’s touting on “10 Bands” and “No Tellin’”. But he’s also just as sure of the girl he’s gonna get on “Madonna”. Put bluntly, it’s the most overtly sinister thing Drake’s penned, and the way he switches his flow and tone from detached to overly insistent gives the lyrics an enormous amount of weight. There’s even an uneasiness to the way 40 morphs the Ginuwine sample, and letting the song close on such a foreboding note allows the following track, “6 God”, to feel more potent than when it was released as a standalone single back in October.

At this point, If You’re Reading starts chipping away at its tough surface; the production becomes more spacious and the lyrics more sensitive. “6 God” and “6 Man” still find Drake as boastful as ever, even referencing his previous works, but they sandwich some of the album’s most vulnerable moments. “Star67” starts with a list of Drake’s possessions but it soon drifts into a hazy blur— drums lose their authoritative power and synth pads take over. We’re left hearing Drake recall his history getting money via phone scams and the pride that characterized the “goddamn, we ain’t even gotta scam” line from earlier makes sense. Right after, PARTYNEXTDOOR takes over on “Preach” and “Wednesday Night Interlude”. The former ends up being the brightest moment on the album, but only deceptively so, as it leads into the loneliness described on the latter. To have the “My Boo“-sampling postlude of "Preach” sound distant and melodramatic only seems appropriate. For the first time on the record, there’s an openness to defeat both past and present. It’s a taking off of masks, and having PND do the heavy lifting on “Wednesday Night Interlude” helps to set the stage for when Drake does the same later.

Drake’s duplicity is a result of many different things. And in the album’s final stretch, we see how admirable it can be to hear Drake at his most sincere. On “Now & Forever”, he feels the need to leave a relationship to focus on his career. He’s convinced it’s a healthy decision but it’s soon contrasted with “Company”, a song that reveals how his insatiable craving for women was probably a major factor. But Drake owns up to it, and we’re soon reminded on “You & The 6” that he’s just another person dealing with his own issues. On it, he converses with his mother about his romantic interests, his place in the rap game, and his father. The most affecting lines end up being “I can’t be out here being vulnerable, momma” and “I used to get teased for being black / And now I’m here and I’m not black enough” for the precise reason that they reframe Drake’s tough guy front to those who didn’t catch on earlier. And in a way, the song reflects the sequencing of If You’re Reading: Drake’s midsong frustration and stuttering eventually gives way to personal confessions and a final, genuine thank you to his mom and Toronto.

Bonus track “6PM in New York” is a wonderful victory lap of a song but “Jungle” closes the record on an appropriately heartfelt note. Drake’s biggest desire has always been to love and be loved by someone. And while Drake’s been manipulative and self-centered in the past, it really sounds like he wants to grow. “Still finding myself, let alone a soulmate” he sings. And throughout the course of the song’s five minutes, “that’s cutting all into my time” turns into “are we still good?” It’s always seemed silly to knock Drake for his inauthenticity and selfishness when I see so much of it in myself. In the opening lines of “Jungle”, Drake croons “the things I can’t change are the reasons you love me”. The same could be said of Drake by any of his fans. I just hope one day we can all, Drake included, say the same thing to ourselves.

Arek Gulbenkoglu - The Reoccurrence (self-released)

Purchase The Reoccurrence at ErstDist

In the recent issue of Surround, Arek Gulbenkoglu describes two specific themes that pervade The Reoccurrence. The first involves the lack of “instrumental imprint” and “technical virtuosity”. And appropriately, the nine tracks that comprise this disc are interesting, almost surprisingly so, for the way in which Gulbenkoglu removes himself from the material. There were echoes of this on his Points Alone record a decade ago, mainly from its shortest tracks, but I’m mostly reminded of his untitled recording with Adam Süssmann in 2008. On that album, we hear the two musicians quietly play over the sounds of their environment. The recording itself sounds completely untreated, and what could have easily resulted in a tedious 76 minutes turns into a calming meditation. That same “purity” of sound seems to exist in other works from this Australian scene but it’s so impressively utilized on Gulbenkoglu’s works, and especially with The Reoccurrence, that it’s consequently reframed everything I’ve previously heard in this area of music.

The second theme that characterizes The Reoccurrence involves “our ability to perceive and comprehend the patterns we hear and see in our everyday actions”. It works mutually with the first theme and points the listener to the minutiae of the sounds around us. The record’s two longest pieces, “Part 3” and “Part 7”, are perhaps the clearest examples of such. The former is a field recording of “an elevated point in the gardens”, and Gulbenkoglu is content with letting the confluence of sounds—birds, cars, children, a constant flow of water—shine on their own. The latter takes on a more conceptual approach, tracing “the sound of the walkway, recording of the structure” and solely consists of quiet, low-frequency rumbles for the entirety of its twenty minutes. Both are drastically different but force us to recognize their inherent patterns as well as the tiny differences in rhythm and tone that break them. The sheer length of these pieces helps in fostering such keen perceptibility but the shorter tracks prove just as effective. “Part 2” creatively utilizes an oscillator to translate a topographical map to sine tones while “Part 4” features a constant stream of playfully scintillating objects. Both are, again, different in approach but the result is still a rawness of recording that eventually illuminates the tiny details of sound held within.

A single arrow adorns the cover of The Reoccurrence. It loops around, ending at where it started. In a way, it reflects the sequencing of tracks here; this record is bookended by a pair of songs whose interferences are relatively noticeable. Because of that, the contrast between these tracks and everything in between is only made more obvious. And of course, the circular arrow represents the album’s central thesis: repetition forms discernible patterns which then provides for us the ability to recognize when the pattern is broken. It’s a simple concept, but Gulbenkoglu shows how delightful it can be when executed masterfully.

Anthony Naples - Body Pill (Text)

Purchase Body Pill at Bleep

Miami-born, NYC-based Anthony Naples made a name for himself as soon as he came onto the scene. “Mad Disrespect” wasn’t only his first song ever, but the first on a 12” that became Mister Saturday Night’s inaugural release. And with it came a request by Kieran Hebden AKA Four Tet to remix “128 Harps”. Since then, Naples has released a handful of 12”s on various labels, including his own Proibito, and there hasn’t been a single dud. Body Pill only continues his streak and finds the producer refining his sound. The tracks on here are uncharacteristically short for Naples, and the album’s only a mere 29 minutes, but he’s efficient with his time. And even with the variety of styles present, the record manages to feel both immersive and cohesive. Naples stated that this record was meant to evoke the mystique of late nights out of the club and onto the streets. In the press release, he specifically mentioned “those weird fluorescent light tubes in the subway. They give off this weird hum that you hear only when you’re alone in the station between trains late at night.” And while he’s since disowned his words, much of Body Pill could soundtrack those moonlit evenings where one feels isolated in a public setting. On “Abrazo”, strings weave in and out, providing a warm contrast to its cold, pinking melody. Later on “Pale”, Naples creates a hazy, uncanny valley-esque drone a la Boards of Canada. And then in the record’s final minutes, robotic melodies play call and response over static and Badalamenti-like keys.

But more than just a unifying sonic aesthetic, Body Pill shows off Naples’ compositional chops. There’s not much happening on “Way Stone”, and it doesn’t even reach two minutes, but its skeletal delay-laden melody feels fleshed out alongside subtle white noise and the periodic thud of a kick drum. Naples’ strongest asset has always been his sound design—his ability to allow individual elements of a song to breathe while simultaneously interacting with each other is what makes him a star, and it’s best showcased on centerpiece “Refugio”. On it, a frantic melody pans from side to side but it doesn’t diminish the effect of the song’s other components—the shuffling hi-hat, the keyboard chords, the tap of a cymbal that faintly reverberates every few measures. In his interview with Pitchfork, Naples stated that he was weary of being put in a stylistic box. That he’s expanding his sound on this record, then, isn’t much of a surprise. And after proving his talent for the past few years, the fact he’s on point throughout all of Body Pill isn’t much of one either.

Cristián Alvear Montecino - Quatre Pièces Pour Guitare & Ondes Sinusoïdales (Rhizome.s)

Hear excerpts from the album here
Purchase Quatre Pièces Pour Guitare & Ondes Sinusoïdales here
 

As if one record from Alvear wasn’t enough, Rhizome.s released a collection of tracks for guitar and sine waves that further proves the Chilean musician’s versatility and refined playing style (check his bandcamp for even more). The first piece is one composed by Alvin Lucier entitled “on the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon, for guitar and pure wave oscillator”. The composition itself is straightforward: a sine tone plays throughout the entire piece as a string instrument (Ryuko Mizutani’s koto on the Lucier recording, a guitar here) interjects with a single note every few seconds. The result is another one of Lucier’s exploration in the physicality of sound. We hear how each note affects the sine wave and how this process also differs with pitch. The main difference between these two pieces lies in the panning of its instruments. Lucier’s piece has the sine wave and koto mixed strictly in the left and right channel, respectively, forcing the listener to mentally follow this cause-and-effect path. Alvear’s realization isn’t as extreme in its mixing but the collision of sound is just as perceptible, making it a bit more palatable.

The following tracks are decidedly less austere. The sine tones on Ryoko Akama’s ”line.ar.me, for guitar and sinewaves” are lively and ripple in an almost whimsical fashion while those on Bruno Duplant’s “premières et dernières pensées (avant de s’endormir)” stay at a relatively low volume. The latter is especially great; the sine tones function as a bed of sound for the emotive guitar playing to build upon but the comfort of their presence never feels as strong as when they’re removed and we hear complete silence. In those moments, the song feels intensely lonely. Sine waves eventually return but it’s only with the thoughtful structure of this composition that they can continually increase in frequency yet feel so soothing. Santiago Astaburuaga’s “pieza de escucha III” closes the record on a high note. It’s a lush 23 minute epic that features Alvear creatively “playing” his guitar, drawing out interesting sonic qualities in the instrument’s body and strings. Actually seeing him perform the composition is thrilling and insightful but being restricted to an aural experience proves just as enthralling because of the song’s unique sound palette.

Michael Pisaro (performed by Cristián Alvear Montecino) - Melody, Silence (Potlatch)

Purchase Melody, Silence here

About four minutes into Melody, Silence, Cristián Alvear plays a chord on his guitar and it resonates accordingly. What isn’t immediately perceptible, however, is that the resulting hum is from both the guitar and a sine tone. The tone then extends for nine minutes before leading into another passage of sparse guitar plucks. What once seemed clear in the record’s first passage is now ambiguous: are there sine tones here? Is this going to be the final note of the section? That there exists any sense of mystery within this skeletal composition comprised of sine tones, guitar, and silence is a testament to its understated beauty. Funny enough, this five minute piece only segues into one with silence. But in the careful examination of each plucked note comes a larger appreciation for them and an understanding of their weight. Sure enough, the final chord in this portion of the recording is dissonant and it feels potent.

I was initially disappointed that Melody, Silence was a single track; that I couldn’t participate in the reordering of its twelve parts seemed less than ideal. Now, that notion seems silly. Pisaro composed these twelve parts such that they “allow for various transformations, cuts, extensions and silences” so not only is Alvear’s realization wholly unique but the recording is specifically edited and sequenced to allow the listener to engage with it in the way Alvear sees fit. Case in point: a sine tone plays for six minutes around 26 minutes into the record. This time, there’s a deeper warmth and serenity to it and it can clearly be attributed to 1) the fact it’s simply played for a shorter period of time than the first 2) is at a relatively lower frequency and 3) is bookended by periods of silence. As with other Wandelweiser compositions, silence is understood as both “material and a disturbance of material”. These passages of silence function as more than repose; there’s a depth to them and they interact with the listener as well as the other instrumentation. Because of this, each guitar pluck and sine tone is sensed to their fullest capacity.

Yannick Dauby - 廠 (chǎng, factory) (Kalerne)

Purchase 廠 (chǎng, factory) here

Regardless of the source material, a field recording artist’s goal is always to capture the distinct qualities of a certain location or species. What separates the good from the great, then, is whether or not they’re able to make such a distinction clear and exciting to the listener. The French-born, Taiwan-residing Yannick Dauby has always been particularly good at taking his recordings and compiling them in a way to maximize their intensity. With the ethnographically-minded Taî-pak thiaⁿ saⁿ piàn, Dauby guided us through the gorgeous sounds in and around Taipei. On Arches, he placed listeners inside a distressing landscape filled with the incessant howling of wolves. And then on Wā Jiè Méng Xūn, he wove modular synths and a choir of croaking frogs together into a playful and lively collage. Most of Dauby’s works aren’t “pure” field recordings but his editing is always purposeful and allows for an immersive experience.

Factory is no different; it starts with a simple drone that establishes the album’s ghastly atmosphere but what begins as a monochromatic fog subtly fleshes out into something more sinister. And in its first third, Factory is genuinely terrifying. The faint sounds of machinery suddenly take center stage and the tumbling, stomping, and rattling of various mechanical processes reverberate forcefully. However, there initially isn’t a rhythmic consistency to these noises and it only amplifies the record’s unsettling atmosphere. As a result, the industrial complex of Factory is decidedly different from the printing press of Pali Meursault’s Offset. Dauby isn’t pointing towards the innate musical qualities of the sounds here. Instead, he utilizes a sound design-focused approach with the varying source material to capture the lifeless place he considers this factory, as made clear in the album’s accompanying poem. This mood is so distinctly captured that halfway through the record, the constant rhythm we eventually hear from these machines is as bleak as the human voices alongside them.

With the numerous recordings that Dauby has made throughout his career, it’s clear that he’s immensely interested in exploring the richness of Taiwan’s culture. However, Factory feels more than just a simple constructing of a soundscape; the way he utilizes these recordings from the Xinzhuang district seem like a political statement, or at least a portrayal of his grief regarding the specific effects of industrialization in this region. The record concludes with an extended ambient passage that functions as a meditative postlude. Its static field recordings soon fade out and we’re left with the lonely echoes of a mallet instrument, a sort of acceptance of the current state of things.

Rie Nakajima - Four Forms (Consumer Waste)

Stream a sample of the first track and purchase Four Forms here

I grinned throughout all thirty minutes of Rie Nakajima’s Four Forms. And this wasn’t just on the first or second listen; with each subsequent revisit, it’s become clear to me that Four Forms is imbued with the sort of life-affirming pleasantness that’s rarely seen in music. In fact, the most immediate comparison that came to mind was Ramon Zürcher’s The Strange Little Cat. Like that film, Four Forms is very much an album whose appeal comes largely from sound design; each minute detail is magnified and feels precisely placed such that every tick and vibration can be appreciated. And its humble premise and presentation—four relatively straightforward recordings of Nakajima’s various automatons—only make the timbral qualities of her sculptures more delightful.

What’s really astounding though about Four Forms is the quality of these compositions. What could easily become tedious in its repetition instead transforms into something hypnotic and soothing. The swirling of a ball opens the first track but never feels oppressive or tiring during the four minutes it’s heard. One could easily accredit that to the inherent lightness of the sound but a lot is certainly owed to the mixing and how well Nakajima pairs her contraptions. The most amusing of these comes in the form of intermittent clanging on track four. The track’s scraping and rattling is generally tranquil but these loud and metallic interjections are frankly amusing, even comical.

The wonderful thing about art is that while an artist may have a say in how it can be interpreted or engaged with, it still has a certain life of its own. With Four Forms, that notion is almost literally presented. While Nakajima was the one who constructed these eighteen machines, these recordings don’t necessarily point towards her involvement. Instead, we’re forced to recognize the sounds as is and relish in the compositions that they seemingly made themselves. On the back of the LP, there’s a blurb from David Toop that mentions how the way we perceive music is a result of where and how we listen to it. Four Forms directly addresses that to us as listeners. While we’re not directly in the room witnessing these automatons function in real time, we’re able “to be closer still, almost inside but seeing nothing, hearing the microaudial detail”, as Toop puts it. Consumer Waste’s previous releases were all published as CDs but Nakajima wanted to have Four Forms pressed on vinyl. It’s an appropriate wish; the process of getting ready to engage with a record only takes us one step closer to engaging with the hyperspecificity of the sounds that are present herein.

Four Forms is a lot of things. With the way the album presents its numerous sounds, it’s effectively an ASMR lover’s dream. It also happens to be an interesting intersection between experimental sound design and twee. And unlike any other piece of music I’ve heard, it distinctly reminds me of the understated domestic humor that characterizes Yasujirō Ozu’s films. But what’s more important is seeing why all these things seem relevant: across its thirty minutes, Four Forms invites us to see how art is living and active, and how it’s possible to experience the same excitement in even the most simple of things we come across in life.

Waxahatchee - Ivy Tripp (Merge / Wichita Recordings)

Purchase Ivy Tripp here

There’s a distinctive sound to each Waxahatchee record that seems to match perfectly with the themes that pervade them. On American Weekend, Katie Crutchfield’s lone guitar strums and clipping vocals echoed the regret, confusion, and listlessness that characterized its songs of heartbreak. With Cerulean Salt, higher production quality and the inclusion of more instruments brought a directness to the varying emotions that she explored through her retrospective observations of people, places, and relationships. Ivy Tripp is a bit different, and she acknowledges it. It still feels indebted to the 90s artists that have always influenced her but it’s also surprisingly poppy and uses this new mode as a way to reframe her astute examinations of others and herself. In an interview with SPIN, Crutchfield stated that this is a record about the “directionlessness of people wandering through life, or trying to find things that make them happy without [conforming to] the structure generations behind us have had”. It seems only natural then that Ivy Tripp finds her expanding her sound palette while sounding more confident than ever.

And it shows immediately. If there’s anything you can expect from a Waxahatchee record, it’s a confrontation of the interpersonal and how that affects oneself. Consequently, it’s not surprising that an album about trying to be happy starts with a song that declares “If I was foolish I would chase a feeling I long age let fade”. Ivy Tripp is Crutchfield at her most self-assured, and it’s even more obvious as the song closes with the proclamation of “I’m not trying to have it all” over a choir of her own coos and la’s. And then anchored by synth pads, a drum machine, and a bouncing bassline, the chipper “La Loose” is just as self-aware. “I don’t hoard faith in us […] I selfishly want you here to stick to” sings Crutchfield. It’s equal parts wry and sincere, using the music to evoke the ostensible bliss of a relationship that’s foreseeably temporary but sustained by a desire for comfort. But the “I’ll try to preserve the routine” of its chorus gets flipped upright by the confessional ”I can imitate some kind of love, or I could see it for what it is and stop kidding myself” in the mellow, keyboard-driven “Stale By Noon”. These songs may be about being directionless but she’s making the most of every part of the journey, doing what she thinks is best for her at any given moment.

There may be a lot of ground covered musically on Ivy Tripp but Crutchfield’s songwriting always shines through. When she’s not making the catchiest songs of her career on “Poison” and “The Dirt”, she’s going back to her relatively simple roots on “Summer of Love” and “Half Moon” with equal nuance. The latter is one of her most somber songs to date, filled with lyrics that are piercing in their candor (“our love tastes like sugar but it pulls all the life out of me”). And they’re made even more devastating from the straightforward piano chords they’re sung over, its consistent rhythm only giving greater emphasis to the dismal state of things. Centerpiece “Air” finds Crutchfield continuing to evaluate her relationships—”I left you out like a carton of milk […] but I wanted you still” she sings in the verse, but all of the tension that’s built up culminates in the final chorus’ ”you were patiently giving me everything that I will never need”. The warm synths and periodic hits of the snare drum work to release that tension but they also reflect the peace of mind that she has by the end of the song. And perhaps most effective is the final half of “Less Than”. She calmly states “you’re less than me, I am nothing” as multiple drums are layered on top of each other in a controlled chaos. It’s a nice representation of who she is throughout the entire record but especially this song; she’s constantly acknowledging her imperfect and messy self but bold enough to confront the things that cause her pain.

Crutchfield’s always had a penchant for recording albums in familiar spaces—her parent’s isolated Alabama lake house for American Weekend, the basement of her home (at the time) in Philadelphia for Cerulean Salt, her new house in Long Island for Ivy Tripp—and it seems to reflect the personal nature of her recordings. Ivy Tripp may be Crutchfield’s first record on Merge, and she’s even stated that it’s the “first record as this person that I am now”, but it’s just as intimate and thoughtful as anything she’s done before.

Vril - Portal (Delsin)

Stream Portal on Spotify

Portal is dense, the sort of hard-hitting LP that German-producer Vril was hinting at with his string of 12-inches and Berghain 05 cut. And while it’s not as varied as Torus, there’s plenty of depth in texture that makes the record so engrossing. Right from the start, “Portal 1” establishes the album’s serious tone via 6 minutes of unyielding, monotonous techno. There’s a slow-burning urgency and pressure that Vril creates on these tracks, and it only makes each hand clap and synth stab increase in intensity as songs lurch forward. But even more severe is when we’re denied the danceability of a 4x4 beat on “Portal 4”. Its anxiety-inducing structure finds potency in off-beat synth wobbles that never resolve. They ebb and flow alongside random electronic squelches and the result is something devilish and maddening. “Portal 7” feels the most all-consuming, however. Its aggressive synths constantly war with each other until they’re outmatched by the re-entering of a kick drum in the song’s final third. The weight of the drop is the most massive moment on the entire record and the synths that permeate from the initial reverberation allow the album to finish on a grandiose high note. Portal comes to an official close though with a postlude, a sort of disintegration of the sounds we’ve heard. It’s a nice statement: the colossal worlds that you’ve just entered, the ones that have kept you in a trance for the past 50 minutes, are the product of a talented producer who can just as easily destroy them. Some artists make music that would sound fine on headphones. Vril, however, makes music that demand speakers and a space in which it can take hold of its listeners.

[note: this mini-review originally appeared in a multi-part post recounting my ten favorite records of January]