The Letterbox Project

And Everything Feels so Sublime (Self Released, 07.2010)

For: Washed Out, ARP, Holy Ghost!

Byline: A huuuugee step forward by a talented, young electronic artist.

I honestly did not see this coming. Tyler Bate's last album, Memory Static, while endlessly listenable, was easily tied to the burgeoning chillwave genre of 2009-2010. Almost too easily. And Everything Feels so Sublime, approaches the genre with a similar toolset: submerged, chopped percussion, keyed-up vocal samples, perennial focus on nostalgia, childhood, and summer, and a relaxed grip on composition that allow his tracks to meander into a sun-streaked beach photo. While the first half of the album lives up to most of the characteristics mentioned above, there are some moments of pure brilliance on this record where Bate's strikes out on his own, expanding, stretching, and generally improving every aspect of his chillwave repertoire. Sublime samples freely from a broad range of sub-genres of dance music incorporating Balearic and downtempo grooves into his underwater soundscape.. Bate's palette sounds infinitely deeper, with much more attention paid to glorious vocal melodies and hidden sub-grooves hidden beneath the de-throned percussion-as-king of Memory Static. Even on tracks like "Sunday Dreamer", whose soulful hook and postivist-lyrics are tied closely to a number of artists trying to recreate Person Pitch, sound remarkably deep with a number of ridiculously well placed vocal samples running deep beneath the track's tranquil surface.

The last half of the album is what kills me. Endlessly blissed out, Bate's mostly wordless compositions warp his sun-drenched synths and percussion samples through the fractured scanning lines of the VHS jilting, distorting, and occasionally submerging the California sunset in closing titles of a taped California Dreams rerun. The image retains some of the same pastoral scenery but is put through a heavy filter of time-defining modifiers. Seriously, the marching-band drums slowly fading into the heralding synth lines on "Learning Curve"....I could live in that moment forever. This is a remarkable leap forward for a young TOME favorite.

Ryan H.

Stream And Everything Feels So Sublime Here

The Letterbox Project

Memory Static (Self-Released, 2010)

For: Toro y Moi, Big Spider's Back, Memory Tapes

Byline: Blissed out Chillwave from the deep south.

I know all of us are kind of waiting to see where this glo-fi/chillwave thing is going to go. Watching something gestate, exit the birth canal, and take its first baby steps on wobbly legs within a few years is exciting, also kind of scary. It would be easy to pass this whole thing off as another in the seemingly endless waves that wash up the collected bones of sunken sub-genres every couple of years, that is if chillwave wasn't the child of the lifestyles of most of us city-dwelling 20-somethings. Chillwave is tied to a sense of regionalism that I thought extinct in the playing-field leveling internet. Chillwave largely exists out of not being able to: 1) afford fancy recording equipment (in theory) to modulate the output above the washed out panning of underwater drum beats and sunbleached synth lines. 2) play loud enough to play without getting the upstairs neighbors calling the cops, or, getting grounded by your parents. Chillwave was made by headphones, for headphones. All this coupled with a love of being totally blissed out on acid and you've got yourself the next big thing in music.

Enter The Letterbox Project, coming out of the same fertile southern states that birthed Toro y Moi and Washed Out, LP's Tyler Bates explores similar sonic terrain. Sounding like they are coming from a house party next door, LP's beats pop like distant fireworks, muted but resilient, as if reverberating through concrete. Endlessly looped, Bate's vinyl warped percussion creates enough space to fill the corners with aria-like synth washes and meandering guitar lines. The Letterbox Project, through the ample use of pan and delay, crate a fully three-dimensional soundscape. Sounds audibly drop underwater, reappear, drown each other out, and resurface. Listening to this outside with nice headphones inspire all sorts of auditory hallucinations. At one point I had to take off my headphones because I thought that the car at the stop light in front of my bus stop was blaring his music really loud. Turns out it was a 2-step beat with the bass turned all the way up nestled deep in my right headphone. Delayed vocal loops trace infinity patterns between the right-left channels on the album's gorgeously affecting first suite. While it may be impossible to seperate this early attempt from the sub-genre that inspired Memory Static, Tyler Bates manages to merge wistful, hazy drones with after-hour club beats. While easy to fault for sticking close to his idols, Memory Static is simply way too interesting to simply write off. Plus, Bate's reach extends beyond his Chillwave contemporaries by pulling in flashes of Eno and the chopped up melodies of Growing. Don't expect not to be moved by this.

Ryan H.

The Letterbox Project Myspace