An Announcement...

Good day, lovely TOME readers!

First, another thanks is due for continuing to read our blog here. Our stat counter thingie is currently broken (lord... we hope), but we're quite certain you're all out there looking at these funny little characters we type about the wonderfully wild and weird world of music.

We love doing this so much that we've decided to up our game. With the help of our beautiful friends Kinsey Hamilton and Eric Peterson, the TOME you've grown to know and love is about to undergo a major makeover. We have a brand new site layout and design, as well as our very own fancy-schmancy tometotheweathermachine.com URL, and we can't wait to show it all to you on August 22nd. So mark your calendars! To celebrate, Tome to the Weather Machine is throwing a site re-launch party in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Denver at Crawf's favorite watering hole Gabor's. The fateful date will also mark the release of a new set of mix CD-r's we will have prepared and lovingly placed in the bar's famous juke box, complete with nerdy notes about why we chose which tracks. I also plan to burn several copies of the last mix Crawf had in there for folks to take home as a parting gift. Drink specials, friends, and fun. Your three favorite things, remember?

So stay tuned, big changes are a-comin', and we hope to see you at Gabor's bar on August 22nd.

Thanks,

—Crawf and Ryan H.

Tome to the Weather Machine Re-Launch Party - Facebook Event Page

p.s. Endless thank yous to the lovely Danni Chandler for helping us organize this momentous occasion! She's also in a rad band we plan to post on in the coming days: The Manxx. Meeeeeoww!

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Dead Drums

Carousin' USA Single (Self-released, 2010)

For: Neon Indian, Talk Talk, Zola Jesus

Byline: Last "summer jam." Triple-promise.

Here's a quickie but a goodie. Baltimore's Dead Drums and its new single "Carousin' USA" sounds like what our generation's front porch rocking chair music will be when we're all old and fat and lazy (can't wait). Slow, easy-going, delicate, and beautiful. It's damn-near the simplest song I've heard all year—two bass notes, mild-pop groove between a bass and snare samples, and gently wafting strums of a tremolo-drenched guitar. The voice comes from behind you, almost massaging your shoulders as you lounge the evening hours away in a coma-inducing swelter. "Perfect" is a word I hate using. I'm using it now: this is so perfect.

You can download this hot little number via the link below at Dead Drums' Bandcamp page. It also comes with an amazing remix of a track called "Edna" that makes use of some really unique rhythmic ethno-hop beats a-la Tortoise' John Herndon.

Dead Drums Official Bandcamp Site (download here)

p.s. I downloaded Dead Drums' Fashion Defense EP from last year, and it's also quite good, however much different - lots of weirdly dark ambient sounds. Dead Drums could really take their sound with either this, or the "Carousin' USA" route and I'd be happy. Also, Dead Drums mastermind Caleb Moore has another similar project called Lands & Peoples that is definitely worth a listen.

—Crawf 8/4/2010

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

M. Ostermeier

Chance Reconstruction (Tench Records, 08.2010)

Byline: A microcosm of ambient-classical prettiness .

For: Labradford, LaMonte Young, Kyle Bobby Dunn

Punk, inherent in its form, is manifesto driven. With every molecule of available sound-space taken up it leaves no room for dialogue. A closed form. Aggressively ideologically driven, wielding a treatise like a meat cleaver. This sort of monolithic propulsion of sound, however, has no place in M. Ostermeier's exploratory ambient-classical compositions. Ostermeier weights and counterweights his ideas with a copious amount of silence allowing the listener to fill in spaces with whatever he/she brings to the table. For me, it was a prevailing sense of nostalgia, and not really the warm, 3rd grade photo kind. I filled Ostermeier's open-ended arrangements with a strange sort of nameless and untraceable lament for missed opportunities with loved ones. That sort of general sadness that people have to die. I can't even describe where it came from. But, compared to the heavy-hitters in the for section (whom he ranks up there with), Ostermeier's compositions carry the most emotional weight out of all them as he explores ambient fields full of glitching, sputtering beats, low-end destroying rumble-drones, and skeletal piano and guitar lines that ostensibly create the backbone of each track. But like any good writer, Ostermeier's gets by with saying more by saying less. In fact, there is little, except for what is piling up well below the surface, to tie the listener to each relatively short (in drone-time length) track. This is why, at only 35 minutes, Chance Reconstruction feels three times as long. This isn't meant as a slight in any way, it is so easy to fall into the lapping, building drones beneath the readily-audible piano/guitar lines, that extracting yourself from them is a difficult task.

By the way, this the debut album for Tench Records (TCH01!!!!). And Tench Records, thank you immensely for the gorgeous packaging on the M. Ostermeier, as I am consuming more and more media digitally (the name of the game in music blogging sadly) it is so nice to get something as aesthetically beautiful and mood setting as Chance Reconstruction. Photo credits to James Luckett Tench and M. Ostermeier, you're doing it right.

Ryan H.

M. Ostermeier Tench Page

Coma Cinema

Stoned Alone (Self-Released, 2010)

For: early Destroyer, Elliott Smith, Belle & Sebastian

Byline: Heart wrenching lyricism and a hyper-direct approach to songwriting flood Coma Cinema's debut cassette. Sadness is contagious. And addicting. Oof, it's a flat-out painfully good record.

I haven't met Mat Cothran personally, but listening to his band Coma Cinema's latest release (via cassette) makes me feel as though we'd known each other our whole lives. Like we're... soul mates. Yeah, that all sounds a little homo-erotic and emo and everything, but damnit, Stoned Alone feels like our breakup record. Mat, are we breaking up? Already? Maybe it's because I'm going through some pretty heavy changes in my own life right now, or maybe it's because Mr. Cothran is going through something (actually, it definitely sounds like he is), but either way, for the past two weeks Cothran's lyrics have slowly seeped their way into my melancholic head as if they were written in a secret diary I found but shouldn't have. A man comparing being high with suicide and finding a comfortable spot there. He's lonely, but is loneliness just his place? Cothran's work is personal to the degree that it's not inviting listeners in, rather offering up something of a self-portrait meant to be looked at, almost pushing away sympathetic ears. Instead, Stoned Alone is empathy in sound. It's gorgeous enough to draw a tear, and no matter how hard he pushes, you'll still want to be closer to Coma Cinema.

The first thing I noticed about Stoned Alone is how direct it is. The album's tracks rarely offer listeners an intro or reference point; they simply start with the band and Cothran's meek and charmingly off-tune vocals, which remain largely at the front of the mix, emphasizing the beautiful poetry to be found within. The band is only modestly good here, as well. But take that statement for what it is (read: not a diss). The drums sort of stumble into rhythmic stasis through some off-kilter fills, and light arrangements of horns creep into the production in a way that sounds definitely self-taught, performed, and recorded. But a sparkling kind of sound would not suit Coma Cinema's aesthetic, which is grounded in things like honesty, modesty, and shyness. As such, the parts here add up to a refreshing whole that is neighborly, bedroomy, young, and impressionable. The songs themselves are often genius, especially "Come on Apathy!" with its revolving-door flow of verses. In all honesty, this was one of the hardest records in recent memory to come up with a set of "RIYL" artists to compare to, and though the ones I chose sort of work, there's really not a lot out there that sounds quite like Coma Cinema, even though the music is so consistently approachable and familiar (the closest is probably City of Daughters-era Destroyer). With some truly beautiful ballads, light indie-pop, and a refreshingly honest approach, this introduction to Coma Cinema is just about perfect, and it's because of its imperfections, not in spite of them. A gem you can loosely file in "indie" without necessarily pigeonholing the band unfairly... not so common these days.

—Crawf 7/30/2010

Coma Cinema Official MySpace

Coma Cinema Official Website (free download here)

Coma Cinema - Only from Tyler T Williams on Vimeo.

Lotte Kestner

China Mountain (Silber, 07.2010)

For: Edith Frost, Tiny Vipers, Laura Gibson

Byline: An arresting collection of portable pacific northwest melancholy kept simple and beautiful on an acoustic guitar and looped vocal accompaniment.

China Mountain can be found on a map. Right...There. Lotte Kestner's musical influences are traceable as well. On China Mountain we hear echoes of early nineties slowcore bands like Idaho and Hayden, we get the sense of the strong female singer-songwriter signed to Sub-Pop, K, and Kill Rockstars record labels, as well as flashes of the faraway hazinesss of Laura Gibson's latest ambient/improvised project with Ethan Rose. China Mountain, like its musical influences are rooted in the northwest. China Mountain is a floating island in the sky, untracable, unlocatable, umapped. Felt more than seen. Recorded on an 8-track in the middle of Marfa, Texas, Kestner takes her quaint, closed, influences and rolls them across the expanses of Texas-plain nothingness. Her minimal compositions sound vast, big enough to get lost in, but quiet enough to sound like someone singing in the motel room next to you. Singing close to the microphone, Kestner's voice seems to overwhelm on the first listen but tapers back on subsequent spins allowing a more three dimensional soundscape to emerge. Were those trumpets on "Compasses"? Sleigh bells on "Leif Erickson"? I am not going to ruin the suprise. Kestner's voice, while often adorned with only skeletal guitar lines and occasional looped vocal arrangements, swirl and form into a cloudy Wang Hui painting, all mist shrouded and depth-perception challenged. It is hard to imagine Kestner's voice accompanying the mundane, repeated acts of domesticity. Frequent nature allegories tie this record to the expanses of a dusk-fading field or a choked forest full of man-sized ferns and moss-covered trunks. Take this album for a spin. A hike. A walkabout. A pilgrimage. A hadj. You will be in good company.

Ryan H.

P.S "Leif Erickson" is an Interpol cover.

Lotte Kestner Myspace

Sun Kil Moon

Admiral Fell Promises (Caldo Verde, 07.2010)

For: John Fahey, Nick Drake, Samamidon

Byline: A subdued masterpiece of nostalgia and virtuoso guitar work. Finally, a proper solo Mark Kozelek album.

There is something approaching perfection in Mark Kozelek's voice. Cutting through the obvious effects (reverb, multi-tracking) there is something like crystalized sadness at the core of it. Kozelek transcends the hubris of the over-indulgent schlockiness of the perennial sad-sack singer-songwriter in a couple of important ways on his latest Sun Kil Moon vehicle Admiral Fell Promises. First, in all of his Red House Painters stuff and continuing onto the sophomore album of his new band (let's face it, it is all Kozelek) he fills his somber meditations with names, places, and proper nouns by pinpointing his sadness to certain places, people, and events in reality and history. Red House Painters painted a picture of Kozelek as the lonely Kerouac-ian poet wasting away in new coffee shops that used to be needle galleries, playing strung out to yuppies in a gentrified nineties San Francisco. Ghosts of the Great Highway returned to his home state, drawing references from childhood and analogies from historical boxers who bloodied the mat for fame, but now only exist in obscure song titles. All of this brings us to 2010's curiously titled Admiral Fell Promises. Like the RHP and SKM albums (as well a couple of self-titled cover LP's and EP's) before it, Admiral Fell Promises roots itself in places Kozelek has visited or resided. His aperture is at full-wide here, illuminating details both mundane and expansive. On "Third and Seneca" he utters "ferries in the puget sound" with "scenesters with beards and tennis shoes" in the same breath, somehow beautifully capturing Seattle in a single sentence. Song titles range from places like "Alesund" (Norway), "Half Moon Bay" (CA), and "Third and Seneca".

The second aspect that lets Kozelek gets away with being pervasively depressing, but haphazardly beautiful, is his virtuoso guitarwork. This has been a divisive feature on Admiral. Opinions on the delicate-picked, nylon-stringed, post-Fahey noodling and flamenco flourishes range from tacked on, perfunctory guitar exercises to undeserved moments of real beauty by a musician not afraid of totally owning his instrument, and letting us know it. These little flashes of brilliance show up on every song in more or less obvious ways. They may feel clunky when Kozelek ramps them up for display purposes only, the intro to "Alesund" and the coda to "Bay of Skulls" critics point to as the worst offenders. I, however, can't stop listening to them. They feel like undeserved treats that live and breathe, and flash luminescent and crazy-eyed under double full moon reflections. Kozelek succeds most admirably when he embeds these virtuoso flashes full-scale in the DNA of his songs. The gorgeous James Blackshaw-like drones on the title track "Admiral Fell Promises" don't get any more gorgeous.

With an album that feels as sparse as an Australian winter, Kozelek doesn't leave us without a few escapist moments of hope in just about every song. Without the full-band and full on jam-tendencies on Ghosts, we are forced to hang on any glimmer of salvation, these range from his vowel-heavy inflection of the name"Leeeee-oooona" on "You are my Sun" and the upbeat guitar picking on "Admiral Fell Promises". For most of the album we swim alone, totally drowned by melancholy. Sometimes thats ok.

Ryan H.

Sun Kil Moon Myspace

HEALTH

Disco 2 (Lovepump United, 06.2010)

For: See Below

Byline: The LA noise rocker's second album, Get Color gets the remix treatment on this monolithic, occasionally brilliant, collection of contributions from some of the innovative artists working in electronic music. Originally published on www.inyourspeakers.com. Used by permission from inyourspeakers, LLC.

Please Read Full Review Here.

At its best HEALTH’s second remix album is a peek into the compositional soundness of one of 2009’s best albums, Get Color. That album, with its sheen of post-industrial guitars and atonal blasts of noise punctuating, rather than designing, the group’s songs, gestured towards a greater level of accessibility, and hinted at a band that really wanted to make dance music. DISCO 2 is an exercise in further turning down the caustic dread and repackaging seven out of Get Color’s nine songs (Death+ and We Are Water are curiously left out) into compositions that range from Miami Vice synth-scapes via Javelin to chopped and screwed nü-goth a la Salem.

At its worst DISCO 2 is the aural equivalent of everyone showing up to the office Halloween party all dressed up as the same thing. Eleven contributors, who instead of embracing HEALTH’s noise-barbed explosions, tend to ignore them as tantrums from an ill-tempered child and zero in on the band’s pummeling, frequently insane, percussion. Instead of extrapolating the tonal-rich interplay between the shrieking electronics and pulsar wave guitars, most of the contributors (many of which were part of the Chillwave explosion of 2009), tend to focus on the percussion-heavy elements of Get Color to the exclusion of much else....

....Heavy hitters Tobacco, Pictureplane, and Gold Panda put their own personal stamp on Get Color’s biggest “hit,” “Die Slow”. Tobacco filters “Die Slow’s” industrial luster through his characteristic manic-motorway synth lines that rip ragged holes through the entire composition. He does right by isolating and accentuating the breathy Cocteau Twins-like vocals and trading the songs primitive two-beat thud for more layered, heavily textured percussion. Where Tobacco highlighted “Die Slow’s” vocals, Pictureplane, the Denver purveyor of swampy chillwave, glitches the vocals up, chopping them into indecipherable chunks of Burroughs-esque word-virus and layers them over vaguely tropical beat with a heavy low-end. The albums most anticipated track, Gold Panda’s remix of “Die Slow” is also the most glitched-out, but in a manner more informed by 20th century electronic music. Gold Panda turns HEALTH’s characteristic polyrhythmic drumming on “Before Tigers” into an endlessly sampleable palette of breaks, and then a clinking, clattering percussion line reminiscent of electronic artists on the Kompakt label or Pantha Du Prince’s microhouse groove....

....Blindoldfreak, Salem, and Crystal Castles represent a trifecta of bands who take HEALTH’s din and dread seriously, producing three of the best tracks on the album. Blindoldfreak, guitarist for former HEALTH tour mates, Nine Inch Nails, produces the album’s most minimalist track, full of escalating, pitch-shifted tones and naked, isolated vocals, resulting in one of the most oddly triumphant tracks on the album. Crystal Castles, who are no strangers to HEALTH remixes nor to dance-heavy noise, stick relatively close to the script by layering on tempo-shifted, absolutely bonkers drumming, calming vocals, and a bevy of household/medical found sound. Salem’s remix of “In Violet”, Get Color’s least abrasive track, takes advantage of the song’s surging rhythm, turning it into something dark and sinister, not unlike the repackaging of industrial music that HEALTH succeeded in conquering on Get Color.

HEALTH’s own contribution, the most electronic sounding song of their career, “U.S.A Girls,” is more than worth the price of admission and often, when played in the context of the album, overshadows the rest of the contributions.

Ryan H.

2muchachos

Summer Vacation EP (Self-Released, 2010)

For: Múm, Yo La Tengo, a vox-less Spacemen 3

Byline: 2muchachos make a quick return for a July album perhaps better suited to a summer in Russia than a summer in Denver...? But I don't know, really... any ideas on what the weather is like in Russia right now?

In my own personal summer-state experience even as we speak, it has thankfully cooled down for the last couple of days here in Colorado. We had a solid two-week stretch of scorching weather, and I was stuck in the house (don't ask) over a long weekend when 2muchachos sent me the follow up to April's positively lovely Prespring EP. But it just wasn't the right time yet. When Prespring hit my headphones initially, I just had to get it out as my environment (and thus, your environment, I felt) demanded its immediate attention. But now that the rain has slowly creeped its way back into regular rotation around Denver, everything feels so much more comfortable. Even though the overall temperature is still relatively high, the coolness of the moisture on the pavement is enough to satiate my skin's thirst. Now is the time. So again, make haste and download this while the air is just the right temperature. It's much too cool of an EP to attempt to enjoy in a sweltering delirium. The term "chill" comes to mind. Chill with it.

If Prespring was all budding flowers, Summer Vacation is the band in full bloom, widening out their palate of sounds with warm bass tones beneath its starry, glittery synth patterns, expanding into subtly delicate moments of sampling and centering in on a more prominent rhythmic core. Summer Vacation is the soundtrack to their own summer, and you can almost make out each part of a July's day for the group track-by-track. From waking up with "Follow the Sunbeams" and it's auspicious glow of layered synths that gleam in gentle streaks, to spending the day traveling about with friends in "Fruity Journey," a track that makes use of a bass drum's perpetual motion and light brushes on the snare to signify a day-time drive (maybe to a neighboring town's fruit stand(?)). The is rest full of carefree what-have-yous: swimming, basketball, or finally just lounging on the couch to re-run television shows into ungodly late hours, quietly drifting off into tomorrow's busy day of doing nothing. Remember, there's no school tomorrow, so don't sweat this one. Just let it simmer.

—Craw'z 7/21/2010

Free Download of Summer Vacation EP

2muchachos Official MySpace

Alcest

Ecailles de Lune (Prophecy, 2010)

For: Jesu, Wolves in the Throne Room, Pyramids

Byline: Gorgeous, sprawling tracks that move from shoegaze to black metal and then back again. Highly recommended.

Ecailles de Lune, by the french shoegaze/black metal duo Alcest, works so well because it offers so many points of access. Alcest pen huge, sprawling tracks that move from multi-layered, major chord nu-shoegaze of A Place to Bury Strangers and Jesu, to post-rock influenced hardcore breakdowns a la Envy and Rosetta, to the soul-cleansing blast-beats and tremelo picked heaviness reminiscent of Wolves in the Throne Room. The above name-dropping shows just how easy it is to plug your personal favorite bands/subgenres (I just thought of three more writing this sentence. Hmm..I Haven't used Cave-In as a reference for awhile) that dominate the growing trend working to bring metal into a broader musical lexicon by pairing it with more accessible and, quite frankly, more interesting sonic elements. Alcest succeed on this level by using moments of classic black metal dynamics to bring their long-playing tracks to an ultimate cathartic conclusion. Alcest go from Slowdive to Darkthrone in a matter of seconds.

While only comprised of two members with single-word monikers, Neige and Winterhalter, Alcest possess an unbelievably encompassing sound that never really moves away from saccharine sweet layers of processed guitar work through all its disparate moves. This gorgeous, layered guitar work accompanies Neige all the way from his gentelest croon to his cracken-unleashed banshee screech necessitated by black metal. This beautiful-ghastly dichotomy works wonders on "Percees de Lumiere", which relies heavily on mid-tempo (for a metal song) drum part and repeating guitar lines over Neige's most tortured vocal delivery. A gorgeous study in contrast. For most of the album, Neige's voice takes on an ethereal coo that floats in and out of center stage, leading tracks like "Sur l'ocean Couleur de Fer" and floating underneath the weight of songs like "Ecailled de Lune - Part 1". Ecailles de Lune is an album whose beauty and power come out of nowhere, I wish I could say, however, that the sheer "whoa" factor didn't wear off after the 5th listen. While enjoyable to pick apart and savor, nothing comes close to that rush that comes with the first few seconds blast-beat craziness. Music as heroin, we will always be chasing that dragon.

Ryan H.

Alcest Myspace

Boxharp

The Green (Hidden Shoal, 2010)

For: His Name is Alive, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Brian Eno

Byline: Spacey atmospherics, booming bass, and gorgeous melodicism. Could you ask for more?

Boxharp is the band of one Scott Solter, a man who's tagged himself producer of such artists as John Vanderslice, Superchunk and the Mountain Goats. But Boxharp, his project with singer Wendy Allen, sounds nothing like any of these. In fact, it's difficult to put any one finger on the prismatic set of influences that add up to the band's expansive yet direct aesthetic. It's "expansive" in that each song starts with a fuzzy blanket of warm, Eno-like ambience that eventually swallows melodies whole. It's "direct" in that those melodies are still very much there, rising from the mist with delicate immediacy, slipping their way gently into the folds with gorgeous harmonies and ghostly effects. Boxharp also highlights an intriguing divide somewhere between the celestial and worldly. The Green jumps from songs that employ West-African rhythmic devices (with drums so wide and cavernous they might have come from the bottom of a dried-up well), haunted ship sea-shanties, twinges of celtic folk song, and pop tunes, too. But each of these styles reaches out beyond the stratosphere; even when the groove is locked in deep, Boxharp still hovers.

Aside from the andante swagger of "Kannarock, VA," paces are kept lullingly slow throughout The Green, something that works for the band's sound but ends up holding the record back at the same time. Probably the closest thing I've heard to Boxharp is His Name is Alive (lord, it feels amazing to type that band name in a blog post), but even those guys knew how to ramp up the tempo and drive one home with some energy. Regardless, The Green comes out as a focused set of lullabies, and really, it's been maybe since Marissa Nadler's Songs III: Bird on the Water that it feels right that way. The Green is late nights, fireplaces, ghost stories and legends, all rolled up into a NyQuil capsule of a record. Your dreams have never sounded so good.

—Craw'z 7/20/2010

Boxharp Official Website

Hidden Shoals Recordings Official Website

Free MP3 of "Leatherwing Bat" *note: this track is supremely beautiful.

Max Richter

Infra (Fat Cat, 07.2010)

For: Johann Johannsson, Machinefabriek, Henryk Gorecki

Byline: Infra-rad

I am sure it was a pleasant surprise for all of us hearing post-classical statesman Max Richter's "On the Nature of Daylight" played during Martin Scorcese's latest film Shutter Island. The same goes for his haunting and elegiac contributions to the dream-like 2009 Israeli film Waltz With Bashir. Max Richter possesses a certain timbre, a certain approach to melody and repetition that is at once recognizable and accessible enough to lend itself easily to any sort of visual accompaniment. I don't know what it is about them. His compositions evoke a difficult to describe emotion, somewhere between the poles of hopeful and soul-crushingly nostalgic. Like photos of ghosts. It is this chameleon-like cloaking device that lends itself so well to context. I am not saying that this a prerequisite to listening to Richter's new album Infra or any of his magnificent body of work, but when trying to put the pieces of Richter's enigmatic emotionalism together, it is a place to start.

Last time we weighed in with Mr. Richter was the release of his 2009 soundtrack to a film that no one saw. It appears that the only evidence that Henry May Long actually exists is a scarcely viewed IMDB entry. Infra, however, moves from the world of the screen and into the realm of ballet. Scored for The Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House in London (London, England, mind you), Infra's pieces move between eight "Infras" and five "Journeys" that are interspersed throughout the album. It would be easy to classify the "Journey" set pieces as having one distinct quality from its "Infra" counterparts, but Richter doesn't make it that easy. Infra is split between short-wave radio interference, squabbling minimal electronic drones, and soaring, heaven-bowed pieces written for strings and piano. There is little distinction between the two sets of tracks. Richter lets his penchant for electronic clatter take control of a track for awhile before piercing the vale with a soaring, bowed cello or violin line that, while we have heard them on every album, is nonetheless as emotionally devastating as the first time we heard it. Richter's classic repeated melodies (I have a hard time calling this minimalism) are on full display on "Infra 5", the album's most celebrated track. Contrasting violin and cello lines are incrementally layered as the track progresses, each one upping push-pull tension between elegiac and triumphant. A frantically bowed violin towards the three minute mark and the characteristic radio static full of un-locatable voices push the track to an inhuman climax full of pathos and regret without a relapse in dynamic tension. Is something this good humanly possible? Yes. 1,000 times, yes!

Ryan H.

Why leave the comfort of your home to go to the ballet. Thanks youtube!