The overglitched sounds of some of today's electronic music can really grate on anyone's nerves. The exponential tendency to let in all sorts of new elements to a piece, only for the sake of the sacrosanct experimentalism, may cause the music equivalent of a renal-retention and the greatest of discomforts to the listener. Most of the time, when you grab an electronic record, it's advisable that you throw a quarter into a fountain, and pray for a set of songs that is both artistically appealing and enjoyable.
Fortunately with Lymbyc Systym you're in for a good treat – even if this is not a proper record by the duo, but rather a reworking of last year's "Love Your Abuser" release. They invited a bunch of friends over to give that record a sponge bath, so to speak. And from the semi-traditional, slightly-more-organic-than-digital opener "Astrology Days", a fuzz-folk track by The One AM, you calmly digest every piece until you reach Daedelus' glorious assemblage of digital detritus, punctuated by loosely vague piano notes, that is the grand finale "...So We Can Sleep".
Anyone familiar with brothers Jared and Michael Bell's revised post-rock for laptops will find this record to be a coherent review of a full-length that permanently tries to solve the acoustic/programming equation. It's not that they fail in breaking the code: the only reason why Lymbyc Systym's work sounds so unfinished may be the difficult task that is to prevent two opposite universes from behaving erratically when put together.
The Album Leaf has been one of the most successful acts in the careful orchestration of electronic dreams for late-night consumption, so it's with great pleasure that one sees the name featured here. The remixing of "Fall Bicycle" is a sonic soirée of mind-numbing electronica. But then comes a pair of songs that rivals with that ear-orgasmic trip to the world of Lymbyc Systym: Bibio, also part of the Mush Records' growing roster, goes all country-like in redressing the superb "Truth Skull", while the title track is an assorted confluence of beats and blips that you would hear in a dream, courtesy of This Will Destroy You.
Those are the highlights from a record that flows like a well-constructed narrative and therefore sounds like it was made by one single act, not by a group of guests working over a pre-determined mold. But it would be unfair to skip Eliot Lipp's soulful rethinking of "Pittsburgh Left" or Reference's short intermission "A Day at the Beach". Even when the duo of brothers cites itself – and this happens twice, on "Birds" and "Idle Wires" –, the fake moonwalking is guaranteed. So you can't go wrong with these guys and their diluted cells of pleasure for headphones. - Properly Chilled |
