BeatRoute Magazine AB print e-edition - March 2017

out,” she sings. “And all the poets were dying of a
silence disease / So it happened quickly and with
much ease.”
The Navigator is a succulent, beautifully-united
concept album, with lyrics that give a damn
elevated by electric guitar riffs, edgy percussion,
Latin rhythms, blazing rock and piercing ballads.
Ultimately the story ends with the compelling
anthem “Pa’lante,” a Spanish term inciting a call to
action, to keep going, rise up and move forward.
And we shall.
• Aja Cadman
HVOB & Winston Marshall
Silk
Tragen
HVOB is an Austrian production duo that consists
of Anna Müller and Paul Wallner. Together, the
duo have released two albums, but for their latest
album Silk, they’ve enlisted the help of collaborator
Winston Marshall. The resulting album is an
emotionally charged take on dance music, often
leaving the dancefloor to cry in the bathroom
alone.
Leadoff track “The Blame Game” is a soulful
post-mortem of a relationship gone sour. It takes a
card from The xx with its moody atmosphere and
guitar-led dance music. It features a dramatic vocal
turn from collaborator Winston Marshall that
sets the tone for much of Silk, the first album on
HVOB’s own label, Tragen.
“Glimmer” and “Astra” serve as palate cleansers
in between the main courses of the album; their
ambient yearning is a welcome change of pace
from the album’s dour emotional core.
Silk isn’t a perfect album, but its successes outweigh
its faults and help to prove that HVOB are a
production duo on the rise.
• Jamie McNamara
Jacques Greene
Feel Infinite
Arts & Crafts/LuckyMe
It can be tough for a well-liked electronic music
producer to deliver on a full-length after a long
run of great singles and remixes. While some
veer towards replicating the feel of a DJ set in
the long form, Jacques Greene has created a
captivating, nearly wordless narrative on Feel
Infinite.
Using his two major trademarks, pitch-shifted
vocal samples and cold, futuristic synth tones, the
artist born Philippe Aubin-Dionne keeps the feel of
his early work alive while using spacious moments
to widen his net. Sonically, the vocal elements (including
a wrenching turn from How to Dress Well
on “True”) recall ‘90s r’n’b, but it’s more the range
of feeling that decade’s mighty runs could contain
that comes to mind than anything else.
While it has a few meditative, nearly beatless
moments to preserve the mood dynamics crafted
into the album, Feel Infinite’s highlights often
come when Greene builds a web of seemingly at
odds rhythms and melodic patterns before flipping
them into a locked stomper. “Real Time” and the
recently JUNO-nominated “You Can’t Deny” are
the best examples of this.
Punctuating the album’s emotive but elusive
tonality is closer “You See All My Light.” A divine
voice repeatedly surfaces, reaching for absolution
but always falling just a second short. As Greene
pointed out in his mission statement for the
album, Feel Infinite is more about aspiration than
reward. Sometimes it’s good to linger in those
moments between.
• Colin Gallant
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
Flying Microtonal Banana
Flightless / ATO
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s newest
album Flying Microtonal Banana is the band’s first
attempt at experimenting with microtonal sounds.
The result is a valiant first attempt, but one that is
plagued with too much repetition.
Microtonal music basically uses smaller intervals
between notes, allowing for more rapid sounding
instruments, a technique popular amongst Eastern
music. The first track, “Rattlesnake,” makes great
use of this, with background shakers and rattles.
The band is sticking to their psychedelic roots, and
it sounds fast-paced and very catchy.
However, as the album progresses you begin
to realize that almost every song sounds like this.
“Melting,” the album’s second track has the same
“snake charmer” microtonal sound to it, and it’s
hard to make it through three minutes of this, five
times in a row.
The band also makes use of strange, ghoulish
background noises on “Open Water,” something
that sounds like an un-tuned bagpipe is heard
throughout the track and later again on the album’s
final track, “Flying Microtonal Banana.”
Overall, one can appreciate the band’s attempt
to try out these off-kilter tunings, and there are
gems on the album: a personal favorite for this
reviewer, the song “Nuclear Fusion.” But, the album
seems to reuse the same sounds, and it’s not interesting
enough to distinguish which songs you like
and which are just background noise.
• Foster Modesette
Less Than Jake
Sound the Alarm
Pure Noise Records
Florida ska punk veterans, Less Than Jake, have
released a new EP entitled Sound the Alarm; it’s
their first album released on Southern California
label, Pure Noise Records.
Right off the start the first track, “Call to Arms,”
will instantly hook long-time Less Than Jake fans.
“Welcome to My Life,” hits the reggae, island feel,
and each song works the brass. “Things Change” is
a great taste of the full EP. After listening to Sound
the Alarm, the only complaint I have is that it’s
only seven tracks long.
A staple in Less Than Jake’s sound is their use
of saxophone and trombone, both of which are
heavily-featured on this latest EP. Catchy riffs and
upbeat drums keep Sound the Alarm light-hearted,
although not as hard-hitting as some past
albums. Lead vocalists, Lima and DeMakes wrap
up the band’s perfected sound with their quirky
and unique vocal stylings, adding perfect harmony.
For first time listeners of Less Than Jake, Sound
the Alarm is a ska-infused and undeniably catchy
album; for fans, Sound the Alarm would be more
See the Light than Hello Rocketview.
Since this year Less Than Jake are celebrating
25 years as a band, Sound the Alarm is the
perfect way to kick off this accomplishment and
following year.
• Sarah Mac
Lusine
Sensorimotor
Ghostly International
From listening to Sensorimotor, the new album
from Lusine (a.k.a Jeff Mcllwain), it’s clear that the
Texas-raised, Seattle-based producer has a firm
grasp on “forward-thinking” electronic music.
Sensorimotor is a compelling album that smoothly
blends electro pop, techno, and disparate dance
music influences in ways that are far from rote.
The album opens with the ambient jangle of
“Canopy,” before fading into the skittering dubstep
of “Ticking Hands,” fearuring vocalist Sarah
Mcllwain. Signature dubstep shuffle bleeds into a
handful of the tracks on Sensorimotor, giving it the
impression of more pop-leaning Burial. Lusine has
a keen sense of how to balance atmospheric drone
with garage house rhythms and melody that place
the album firmly on more accessible landscape
than that of Burial. “Witness” features a vocal turn
from Benoit Pioulard that wouldn’t sound out
of place on Miike Snow’s earlier albums. Elsewhere,
“Just a Cloud” featuring Vilja Larjosto, is a
genuine synth pop hit, slyly-catchy and irresistibly
earworm-y.
The album closes with the seven-minute, arpeggiated
odyssey “The Lift.” It is a confident production
that has had its components whittled down
to clock-like efficiency. Like much of Sensorimotor,
it leaves the impulse to hit repeat again and again.
• Jamie McNamara
The Luyas
Human Voicing
Paper Bag Records
With arms into Montreal’s finest acts such as
Arcade Fire and Belle Orchestre, The Luyas surprise
more in approach than in execution. There is a familiar
baroque instrumental complexity, but much
less of the cinematic grandness than their pedigree
might predict.
Their fourth full-length outing, Human Voicing,
does an effective job of avoiding contemporary
musical tropes that frequently get dismissed as
“overproduced” or “generic.” Tracks are often
slow and plodding, with only spare moments of
melodic clarity. Rarely, if ever, does electronic affectation
or deep reverb inject anything inorganic
to its atmosphere. The Luyas efforts at creating a
meditative record seem to come more from jazz
than from rock or pop. Pretty guitar and violin
lines are smartly obscured by layers of instrumentation,
often organs or mid-range synths. Instead
of reaching into chamber pop, the arrangements
stay hazy, often anchored only by a bassline or
keyboard drone, and singer-instrumentalist Jessie
Stein’s breathy vocal.
The Luyas do more with less, and Human Voicing
is a clearly constructed and restrained release.
While it sinks far enough into the mid-range to
be murky and contemplative, it bursts out often
enough to keep itself interesting.
• Liam Prost
Methyl Ethyl
Everything is Forgotten
4AD
It’s hard not to draw a parallel between Tame
Impala’s Kevin Parker and the frontman of Methyl
Ethyl, Jake Webb. Both hail from the isolated city
of Perth, Australia, both started their respective
bands as a means to home record studio experi-
48 | MARCH 2017 • BEATROUTE