Friday, December 28, 2012
Reviews Social Studies: 'At Arms Length'
Posted by Bobby Power on Fri, Dec 28, 2012 at 10:27 AM
Zano's quick-fire delivery and rambles of hallucinatory wordplay shape a large part of At Arms Length, front-loading the LP with three tracks of the Atlanta emcee's unique vocals. Much like Beans at his best, Devoe's slanting and shifting production provides a bizarrely symbiotic playground for Zano's alien transmissions.
"String Theory," featuring Adron's ethereal vocals, picks up where the post-millenial Warp or Anticon laptop-based producers left off, clinically cutting and pasting post-modern pastiche and darkly engaging beauty. "Call and Response," an esoteric transgression that falls midway through the LP, is a spidery travelogue of post-modern pop. Think the Books' sonic collages if the Modern Love label existed in 2002.
Devoe yields the biggest payoffs here by venturing outside of his comfort zone. Reworking a track from Lyonnais' mesmerizing debut LP, the producer conjures mutant, atmospheric funk in a murk of propulsive, gothic noise. "Playing Games" is an instrumental tone poem in the key of Walls' or the Field's signature Berlin-framed kosmische dance music. "Toxo," a hypnotic tune featuring vocals from newcomer Zopari Kristjanson, blends Morr Music's cheap Casio-percussion with expansive shoegaze textures for a pristine goth pop anthem. The song detours momentarily through a synthetic drift of melody and drones. The shoegaze sentiment resurfaces on "Diamonds in Cynthia's Dress," an U.N.K.L.E.-affected lurch that hints at the riff of My Bloody Valentine's "Only Shallow."
At Arms Length is clearly the result of Devoe's careful production and meticulous editing, with every curious angle and snippet of the 70-minute+ suite adding to the big picture rather than bloating a broken mess of sound.
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