Author Archive

Teen Girl Scientist Monthly “Summer Skin”

Teen Girl Scientist Monthly is one of those rare bands that arrives fully formed with a debut album that sounds like it may as well be someone’s greatest hits record. Every song is catchy, well-constructed, and executed with a high level of confidence. If you love energetic indie rock/pop-punk/power pop, you will want to dance and sing along by the time the second chorus hits in most of their songs. “Summer Skin,” the first track and first single, is the best place to start with them. It’s this gleeful, reckless joyride of a song that just zooms at you full speed. The album overall reminds me a bit of The New Pornographers’ debut, and what it felt like to hear that band for the first time, and this song is very much the “Mass Romantic” of the record. It throws you right into the excitement, and the vocals by Morgan Lynch come close to Neko Case’s sassy, authoritative tone.

Buy it from Bandcamp. No, seriously, go buy it.

The Dismemberment Plan “No One’s Saying Nothing”

This song has the most provocative opening lines of anything I’ve heard this year: “You hit the space bar enough, cocaine comes out / I really like this computer!” It’s more funny to me because I have a bit of context in my own experience, but also in that I know Travis Morrison has been working for the Huffington Post for years, and I know that the corporate culture there is pretty intense and demanding, to say the very least. The new Dismemberment Plan is pretty much a concept album about working this sort of job, and trying to hold on to some feeling of being a cool, fun person with a life, but slipping further into professionalism and a conventional adult life and being basically okay with it. This song is the best and most effective – partly on a purely melodic level, but also because I really like the way the arrangement is like a weirdly cheerful spin on “Airbag” by Radiohead. From OK Computer to Pretty Good Computer, I guess.

Buy it from Amazon.

Pusha T and Kendrick Lamar “Nosetalgia”

Pusha T is great on this song, it’s probably one of the two or three best performances on his entire new album – excellent delivery, sharp wordplay. But despite that, he’s still completely upstaged by Kendrick Lamar on this track. But that’s a given these days, I guess. Kendrick is in a very exciting position lately – he’s in his prime and has achieved some mastery over his craft, but he’s still constantly pushing himself to do little formal experiments. His voice is only getting more expressive, and he’s finding new ways to make words and syllables pop. His verse here is interesting too in that he’s providing an important counterpoint to Pusha’s verse, which is his umpteenth rap about being a crack dealer. Kendrick’s verse flips the perspective drastically, speaking from the perspective of someone who grew up with parents and family members addicted to crack. Pusha’s verse is cause, Kendrick’s is the effect.

Buy it from Amazon.

Pearl Jam “Infallible”

Pearl Jam have been essentially the same since around 1998. That’s when their lineup solidified with Matt Cameron as their permanent drummer, and it’s when the band officially dropped out of the mainstream and firmed up their position as a cult act mainly focused on touring. They found a comfortable niche where they could thrive, and then immediately lost all creative ambition. Aside from a few token tracks here and there, they haven’t experimented at all since No Code in 1996, and each album from Yield onward is essentially the same record with different songs. This isn’t to say that the records have been bad – some have been better, some have been worse, and all of them have at least a few very good tracks – but the songwriting settled into a few basic templates and there has been no variation in aesthetic, tone, production style, or songwriting emphasis. Every album is well-rounded in the same predictable way, so you can’t even be like “oh, that’s the folky one, that’s the heavy one, that’s lo-fi one, that’s the double album.” It’s sensible, but also mystifying in that these talented guys seem so hell-bent on sticking to a formula and never stepping outside of their comfort zone.

Lightning Bolt, their new album, is pretty much exactly what you’d expect. The songs range from pretty good to perfectly fine, though I don’t particularly like the new single “Sirens,” which sounds more like a band you’d say sounds like Pearl Jam than Pearl Jam themselves. The big keeper on this one is “Infallible” – it has a nice lurching groove, a bit of color in the bass and keyboards, and a melody that flatters the rich, handsome tone of Eddie Vedder’s voice. His performance here is pretty great, I always love when he filters classic soul affects through his distinct vocal style. It’s funny, he’s actually kind of a hugely underrated rock singer now. But then again, he’s probably not doing enough to showcase his voice in terms of material. It would be more striking to people if put in a slightly different context.

Buy it from Amazon.

Cass McCombs “Big Wheel”

This song has the most aggravating fade out I’ve heard in a long time. I get it on a conceptual level: The song keeps going on and on, like the trucker narrator driving off into some infinite horizon, but damn it, I want to stay with it! The lyrics of this song are exceptional – partly because there’s some very vivid and specific images, but mostly because the rambling internal monologue takes some turns that are genuinely surprising. I particularly love when the character starts dissecting the question “what does it mean to be a man?,” and both challenges the idea, and embraces a particular idea of masculinity that gives him a sense of pride and identity.

Buy it from Amazon.

Cults “I Can Hardly Make You Mine”

As it turns out, I like Cults a lot more when there’s a bit more momentum to their music. “I Can Hardly Make You Mine” is basically where Motown pop, ’60s garage, and ’90s female-fronted alt-rock meet in a Venn diagram, and it’s a very appealing mixture. A lot of what makes the song work is Madeline Follin’s voice, which can be a bit thin and tinny on other songs, but has a great chirpy yet desperate tone here. Also, that brief solo has a fantastic melody that spirals nicely off the main riff.

Buy it from Amazon.

Lee Ranaldo and the Dust “Key-Hole”

The most interesting thing about the three principle songwriters of Sonic Youth splitting off to do their own thing is hearing their personal aesthetics and skill sets in isolation, and having that inform the way I hear the music they made as a group. It’s also intriguing to hear what they do when left to their own devices at this point in their career, and how the three picked very different paths – Thurston being more or less creatively stagnant yet obviously invigorated by playing with a stripped-down punkish band, Kim going for an ultra-arty record bordering on primal scream therapy, and Lee going off to put his own spin on folk rock without a care in the world as to whether anyone thinks it’s cool. But while I think some people look at what Lee is doing as being regressive or retro, he’s actually the one of the three who is pushing what Sonic Youth was doing over the past decade or so in another direction. There isn’t much on his second album with The Dust, Last Night on Earth, that is far off from where Sonic Youth were on A Thousand Leaves or Murray Street.

I really do wish that “Key-Hole” could’ve been a Sonic Youth song. It’s actually sort of surprising that it’s not – maybe it’s the particular type of dramatic tension and release, maybe it’s because Steve Shelley is on drums, maybe it’s because the guitar interplay isn’t far off from what Thurston would’ve done around Lee’s parts. But I can also hear the things that probably wouldn’t have made it into a Sonic Youth piece – there are elements of “classic rock” that I think would’ve been roughed up a bit more to keep it from seeming too traditional. But I’m glad that it wasn’t – I like that it’s clean and groovy, I love when it slips into these gorgeous, tranquil sections. The song drifts along, then seems to get picked up on gusts and waves. The emotion of it follows suit, but the core of it is that mellow drift, and Lee singing a couplet in the middle that rings very true: “Let’s make the best of a bad situation / try to define love any way we can.”

Buy it from Amazon.

Gems “Medusa”

I have, over the past decade, become very skeptical about EPs and stray hype tracks for new artists – it’s most often the only songs the artist has ever made, and I’ve lost a lot of patience for hearing people work through the basics of songwriting. This song by Gems, though, is why I shouldn’t be so lazy or cynical. “Medusa” is a remarkably sophisticated pop song, and the band seems to have arrived fully formed in terms of character and aesthetics. The center of the song is Lindsay Pitts’ vocal performance, which effortlessly glides from a seductive midrange up to ecstatic high notes in a way that reminds me a bit of Alison Goldfrapp. But I’m just as interested as what is on the periphery – the foggy atmosphere, the arrival of a proper smoothly articulated guitar solo, the male backing vocals that are surprising at first but then become an important contrast to Pitts’ lead.

Visit the Gems website.

Grass House “The Colours in the Light May Obscure”

To my ears, Grass House is basically like The National if they were actually British, a bit jauntier, and had a far more melodic and colorful lead guitarist. So, yeah, I like them a lot more. It’s a little unfair to cast them in this light, but that “poetic deep voiced gentleman” thing is there, even if they don’t completely surrender to a dour vibe. My favorite thing in this song is certainly that lead guitar refrain, and the way it comes off as towering and grand, but also somewhat sly and knowing. It turns the entire song on its side, and somehow makes the vocals seem a bit more rakish.

Buy it from Amazon.

of Montreal “Belle Glade Missionaries”

I’ve been starting to feel weird about how much I relate to a lot of Kevin Barnes’ lyrics, particularly as he’s been moving in this increasingly venomous direction over the course of the past three of Montreal albums. Lousy with Sylvianbriar dials back the spite from where he left off on Paralytic Stalks, but he kinda had to walk it back from there – that record goes so far into the depths of spite and despair that the only way to top it would be to literally record a nervous breakdown. Lousy is a something of a course-correcting album – it’s a little brighter, the songs are tighter and more traditional. The influence of Prince and Sly on the past several albums has been replaced by Bob Dylan. Dylan-ness serves him well – the music is far more relaxed, but gives him a familiar framework to write songs that obliquely eviscerate someone, or maybe sometimes himself.

“Belle Glade Missionaries” is my favorite, maybe because it’s so amusing in its bitterness and exotic detail. I mean, this is a song in which Kevin mocks someone for being overly concerned with the popularity of their naked GIFs and then sinks the knife deeper by telling them that “their friends don’t give a shit and view your fugues with amusement.” The stuff that really sinks in for me, though, are the more cynical and fatalistic lines. You know, like the one about how there are no victims to the evils of the world, only participants. Or the line which kinda sums up all of his recent music: “Still, there’s a value in things unpleasant.”

Buy it from Amazon.

Miley Cyrus featuring Future “My Darlin'”

I was trying to figure out what it is about this song’s strangely shifting, asymmetrical arrangement that makes it feel so much more sad than it might if it was played straight, and I realized that it’s because it feels like half of it is missing, and it’s a song about feeling like you can’t survive without a person you are convinced completes you. The music sounds like it’s broken, the Future sounds like he’s part malfunctioning robot, part fading memory. Miley’s voice is strong and strident – if you have any doubts about her actual talent, this song should set you straight. Her phrasing at the climax, when she’s singing “I can’t breathe without you, without you as mine” really hits me in the gut.

Buy it from Amazon.

Lorde “Ribs”

I have complicated feelings about hearing a teenager sing “it feels so scary, getting old,” but it’s clear that Lorde is aware of the irony, and connected to the emotional truth of that thought for a teen. “Ribs” is about the odd, awkward transitional stage between being a kid and becoming…well, I guess an older kid. A young adult, let’s say. There’s a push and pull between wanting to move on to something new, and regressing because you don’t want to lose the good parts of being so young and you’re scared of change. “Ribs” works well in part because Lorde allows this feeling, something that is easily dismissed by people as they get older, to be nuanced and ambiguous. It’s all the stuff you forget later on, but the complex feelings about change never really go away.

Buy it from Amazon.

I skipped writing about a lot of these in the past couple weeks for whatever reason, but let’s catch up on things.

Phoenix @ Barclays Center 10/2/2013
Entertainment / Lasso / Lisztomania / Long Distance Call / Fences / Rally / The Real Thing / Too Young – Girlfriend / S.O.S. In Bel Air / Run Run Run / Trying To Be Cool – Drakkar Noir / Chloroform / Sunskrupt! / Consolation Prizes / Armistice / 1901 / Countdown / If I Ever Feel Better – Funky Squaredance // Rome / Entertainment (Reprise)

I’ve seen a fair number of Phoenix shows going back to the Alphabetical era, and in all cases those have been gigs in clubs or relatively small-scale venues, so I’ve been very curious to see how their act translates in an arena. It worked pretty well – the audience, particularly the people on the floor, were definitely super excited through the whole show, and they’ve got enough undeniable pop songs that they can play a show that feels like a very satisfying hit parade. Their arena game could use some work, though – better visuals and staging would go a long way, and also some way of shifting the dynamic/momentum around the middle of the show. They mix it up a lot at the end, mainly by having Thomas Mars go out into the audience, and that works really well – he’s not the most wildly charismatic dude, but he makes up for that by being really enthusiastic and willing to physically engage with his fans and the space of whatever venue he’s in. This show ended with him running around half the venue and back through the floor, and getting crowd-surfed back to the stage before inviting at least 150 fans to dance on stage. That was totally exciting, and if they want to keep performing on this level, they should explore more ideas like that which can be peppered throughout the performance.

Tame Impala @ Terminal 5 10/1/2013
Why Won’t You Make Up Your Mind? / Solitude Is Bliss / Endors Toi / Apocalypse Dreams / Half Full Glass of Wine / Elephant / Music To Walk Home By / Be Above It / Feels Like We Only Go Backwards / Mind Mischief / Oscilly / Desire Be Desire Go / Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Ben Anything We Could Control

Tame Impala is another band that should invest in some visuals for their live performances – they need to give you something to look at and zone out to, because they’re just sort of dull to look at. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that their groovy psychedelia comes across very well in concert, but it should be noted that they’re good enough to be exciting even when playing at a venue with such horrible sound that they had about as much low end as if they were playing through a clock radio. The bass, so deep and warm on record, just did not have the appropriate volume and resonance, and that was just bullshit.

The Flaming Lips @ Terminal 5 10/1/2013
Look…The Sun Is Rising / The Terror / The W.A.N.D. / Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast / Silver Trembling Hands / Race For The Prize / Try To Explain / Butterfly, How Long It Takes To Die / Turning Violent / A Spoonful Weighs A Ton // Do You Realize??

The Flaming Lips were the reverse of Tame Impala in this show. Their current staging and lighting is astonishing and great, it’s like checking out a great piece of installation art that just so happens to include a performance by Wayne Coyne and his pals. The music itself was just kinda ok, though, and I say this as a longtime fan of the band. The material from The Terror is sort of dull and listless in concert – the album is interesting as a portrait of a depressed mind, but that doesn’t really translate on stage. Even when the band was playing excellent oldies like “The W.A.N.D.” and “Silver Trembling Hands,” there was this nagging sense that the staging was carrying the show, and that Wayne Coyne was frustrated with the audience not being as amped up as they might have been for previous iterations of their live show.

Atoms For Peace @ Barclays Center 9/27/2013
Before Your Very Eyes… / Default / The Clock / Ingenue / Stuck Together Pieces / Unless / And It Rained All Night / Harrowdown Hill / Dropped / Cymbal Rush // Skip Divided / Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses / Rabbit In Your Headlights / Paperbag Writer / Amok /// Atoms For Peace / Black Swan

This was such a weird show. I’ve seen Radiohead many times in large venues and I know that Thom Yorke has a big persona that can connect on a large level, but everything about this show seemed like him doing everything he could to disrupt all the things that make him and his music connect with people. I think The Eraser and Amok are interesting records and probably a necessary artistic outlet for the sort of ideas that clearly would get vetoed by the other members of Radiohead, and in a mostly abstract intellectual way, I appreciate how he explores small, complicated emotions and tight, complicated rhythmic patterns. But there’s still something odd about watching one of the most talented musicians of the past two decades avoid all of his strengths as an artist. My main take away from this show was that people love Thom Yorke SO MUCH that they’re willing to pay a lot of money to see him play the weakest material of his career with the bass player from Red Hot Chili Peppers. But hey, Flea was the best thing about this show – he has a surprising chemistry with Yorke, and he brought a liveliness, funk, and physicality that kept the show from being overly cerebral.

Vampire Weekend @ Barclays Center 9/20/2013
Cousins / White Sky / Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa / Diane Young / Unbelievers / Holiday / Step / Horchata / Everlasting Arms / Finger Back / California English / A-Punk / Boston (Ladies of Cambridge) / Ya Hey / Don’t Lie / Song 2 / Campus / Oxford Comma / Giving Up The Gun / Obvious Bicycle // Hannah Hunt / One (Blake’s Got A New Face) / Walcott

This show was just so, so, so great. An excellent performance, but more than that, just a generous selection of uniformly excellent songs played with a lot of spark and inspiration for a very enthusiastic audience. I was up in the cheap seats for this one, but I really lucked out in that I was in this section full of young, dance-happy girls who were freaking out over Ezra like he was the intellectual indie version of Justin Bieber. And I guess he is! I would’ve been really into this no matter what, but being right by people who are that psyched up for anything will always improve the experience. Also, oh my god, the alternate guitars-only version of “Don’t Lie” in this set was heart-stopping and I really hope a nice recording of that arrangement turns up before too long.

Solange @ Barclays Center 9/20/2013
I don’t have full notes for this but she definitely played: Lovers In The Parking Lot, Losing You, Stillness Is The Move, and Sandcastle Disco

I like Solange, but wow, she is not suited to playing an arena at all. Her persona is engaging in close quarters, but from a distance, she’s just sort of dull and flat, and that ends up making you realize how much of her material is sort of bland and under-written. The set picked up a bit when she played stronger material like “Stillness Is The Move” and “Losing You,” but her presence doesn’t register from far away. She was trying to get people dancing and moving, and that only made it more awkward – if you have to nag the audience to do that stuff, it just makes it feel weird for everyone.

Sky Ferreira @ Barclays Center 9/20/2013
Boys / 24 Hours / Heavy Metal Heart / I Blame Myself / You’re Not The One / Everything Is Embarrassing

Sky Ferreira made a lot more sense in an arena. She focused on big rock songs from her upcoming album, and the space was perfectly suited to the huge choruses of numbers like “I Blame Myself” and “Heavy Metal Heart.” I’d never heard them before, but they were immediately exciting and felt familiar to me by the second chorus. She’s still sort of awkward, but the material is strong and her voice is confident.

Haim “Honey & I”

Haim write about love in very reasonable ways. “The Wire” is a breakup song, but a song in which the singer is incredibly invested in the idea that the person she’s dumping is going to be “okay anyway” without her. The flip side of that song is “Honey & I,” which is a love song, but one in which the measure of the relationship comes down to “we’re doing just fine.” No unreasonable expectations, I guess! But the scale of expectation and drama is exactly right – this isn’t about a fantasy, it’s about two people working it out and being happy to do the work. This is the other side of the romantic apprehension of “The Wire,” and the music feels like the other side of it too – it’s a different, prettier sort of harmony, and the tight pocket rhythm of “The Wire” is traded for a relaxed acoustic groove.

Buy it from Amazon.

Justin Timberlake “Drink You Away”

I have a hard time figuring out how I feel about Justin Timberlake. When it comes down to it, I only really like a handful of songs from throughout his career, but the ones I like, I like a lot. I admire his raw talent and show biz charm, but can also find it hollow and tacky. I think his taste for recording overlong, overstuffed songs is incredibly indulgent, but I respect that someone on that level of fame and success is willing to take a chance with people’s attention spans and willingness to embrace Timbaland’s aesthetic excesses. I find that I like Timberlake more when he’s further away from that Timbaland sound – I never really cared for Timbaland much in the first place and a lot of his sound just seems painfully dated to me now. Timberlake’s charms are flattered by rather old school sounds: The white boy soul of “Pusher Love Girl,” the Michael Jackson disco of “Take Back the Night,” and “Drink You Away,” which is about as rock as he gets and basically sounds like an arty remix of a Black Crowes song. That gospel-blues-rock vibe suits Timberlake well, and the bolder dynamics of that structure gives him a chance to be dramatic and emphatic in a way that he generally can’t be when he’s in a more moody, static Timbaland suite. It just gives me a nudge towards humanity, especially when too much of his music sounds like the antiseptic result of living the life of an unfathomably wealthy playboy.

Buy it from Amazon.

Electric Six @ The Bell House 9/25/2013
Electric Demons In Love / After Hours / Down At McDonnellzzz / Adam Levine / Jimmy Carter / Jam It In The Hole / Gay Bar / Gay Bar Part Two / She’s White / Hello! I See You / Steal Your Bones / Show Me What Your Lights Mean / Clusterfuck! / Danger! High Voltage / Formula 409 / I Buy The Drugs / We Were Witchy Witchy White Women // Nom De Plume / Dance Commander

Electric Six “Show Me What Your Lights Mean”

I just looked over my archives and realized this was my first Electric Six show since 2010. They’re pretty much always on the road and pass through New York at least once a year, but I remember having a lot of bad luck with scheduling the past few times they’ve played here. It’s always a let down to miss an Electric Six gig because they are a guaranteed good time: The sets are heavy on the “hits,” and the audiences are always eager to dance and rock, and Dick Valentine is always going to be a hilariously over the top showman. There’s no one else like him – he fully inhabits this scathing satire of masculinity, hard rock, and show business while fully embracing it all the same time. It’s all deeply ironic and self-deprecating, and yet totally straight forward in delivering the thrills of rock music and unrestrained ego. They played at least one song from each of their nine (!) albums, including three from the forthcoming Mustang. (“We’ve got a new album…it’s on Craigslist.”) Of those cuts, I most like “Show Me What Your Lights Mean,” which was played after a surreal monologue about high school football and playing a 34-date tour of Texas. It’s a good example of latter day E6 – a little less obvious in its satire, but very vivid and funny in the way it examines the fantasies and confusions of straight men.

Buy it from Amazon.

Icona Pop “All Night”

The funny thing about Icona Pop’s debut album is that pretty much every song sounds as though the girls have to stop themselves from breaking into the chorus of “I Love It.” And a lot of the time, I just wish they would. I feel a little conflicted about their songs – I enjoy them just fine on a superficial level, it’s basically the type of excited, vaguely punkish dance pop I’ve been championing for over a decade. But because of that, I know a lot of better songs in that vein, so their songs have to be exceptionally catchy and joyous, like “I Love It” and “All Night,” to fully register with me. It’s also odd that on a record that’s meant to be so rowdy and party-ready can often feel so restrained. They never really go as all-out as Ke$ha, who does a very similar thing but with far more pizazz, bigger hooks, and an utter lack of shame.

Buy it from Amazon.

The Juan Maclean “Feel Like Movin'” (Detail)

This track, particularly in its full unedited form, is my favorite non-Disclosure dance song that I’ve heard this year. It’s actually not very far off what Disclosure do – which is to say, it’s basically a platonic ideal of late ’90s/early ’00s dance music, and entirely sidesteps any notions of genre innovation in favor of astonishing craft and the flawless delivery of joyful hooks that make me feel incredibly excited to be alive. Nancy Whang sings on this cut, and she really puts it over the top – she has a way of singing fairly simple melodies and lyrics in a way that somehow balances a smiling earnestness and a slightly deadpan quality. It’s basically that feeling of embracing something you know is silly, and you love it for being silly with all of your heart.

Buy the full version from DFA.

Chvrches “We Sink”

I keep trying to find the right adjective to describe Lauren Mayberry’s voice, but it never comes. The best I can do is mix some metaphors – the treble in her voice is very bright, but also very rounded off. This could be “girlish,” I suppose, but that word seems a bit dismissive, and the connotations of it are at odds with her very forthright cadences. That’s ultimately what makes her very compelling: She seems incredibly assertive even when she’s singing from the perspective of someone involved in self-destructive behavior. “We Sink” is a perfectly example of this – it’s basically a song about being part of a poisonous codependent relationship, and feeling utterly convinced that both sides would not be able to survive apart from one another.

Buy it from Amazon.

Deerhunter @ Webster Hall 9/19/2013
Octet / Neon Junkyard / Don’t Cry / Revival / Like New / Desire Lines / Hazel St. / T.H.M. / Rainwater Cassette Exchange / The Missing / Helicopter / Sleepwalking / Back to the Middle / Monomania / Twilight at Carbon Lake // Cover Me (Slowly) / Agoraphobia / He Would Have Laughed

Deerhunter “Neon Junkyard”

I saw the current lineup of Deerhunter play at the Governors Ball festival over the summer and that was quite good, but it was sort of a compromised experience in that I was up to my ankles in sticky mud and, more importantly, Deerhunter is simply not a band that is meant to be seen and heard outdoors in the middle of the afternoon. This show was the ideal way to experience them – in a medium size club with an intense light show that kept the band mostly in silhouette aside from when the strobes were flashing, and you could get a good look at the dress Bradford was wearing. It was very dramatic, and the band played every song a bit more epic than on record – this was particularly noticeable on songs like “Neon Junkyard,” “Don’t Cry,” and “Sleepwalking,” which seemed to expand greatly in terms of implied scale. Even in terms of Deerhunter shows – and I’ve seen many very good ones – this set was particularly powerful and emotional. When I left the venue I thought for a bit about whether there’s any other contemporary band that does art/shoegazer rock nearly as well, and really, there isn’t any competition. We’re lucky to be around in the prime of this band.

Buy it from Amazon.

The Field “Cupid’s Head”

The thing I like most about The Field’s music is the way it can feel like moving and being frozen in place at the same time, or like being at the center of some kind of time glitch. Axel Willner’s loops are so brief and tight, like oddly clipped animated gifs of sound, but his arrangements are much less static, slowly shifting around subtle beats, sounds and tones. My favorite of these in “Cupid’s Head” is a droning keyboard part that is buried enough to be nearly subliminal, but is crucial in that it makes the composition bend and curve a bit, and suggests a bit of movement that is removed from the momentum of the loop and beat.

Buy it from Amazon.