Is there anything Nigel Godrich won't do? The musician-producer extraordinaire, responsible most notably for his work with Radiohead, among so many others, has now teamed up with freelance(ish) drummer Joey Waronker, and some lady named Laura Bettinson, to produce a clicky, sliding electronic post-dubstep album. It has all the elements we've come to expect from the genre, but it somehow surpasses the norm, and is a genuine joy to listen to.
Let's start with the basics. The instrumentation is kept to a minimum, with mostly staggered drums and air-filling orchestrations taking the mid range below Bettinson's lovely, honeyed vocals. Album opener and single Bad Insect frames these three simple factors perfectly; it jumps around and is catchy as all hell, but at the same time contains such atmospheric detail you could only get from someone with such knob-twiddling chops as Godrich. The rest of the album follows suit, and surprisingly allows no filler. Gold Dayzz starts off slowly with a Radiohead-esque roll (surprise surprise), before building into a lush and wavering soundscape. Smalltalk dips its toe into Burial's spacey syncopation, Wash It Over (among a few others) fills your head with almost crunchy synth noise, while closer You're Out ties it all up gloriously with flowery rhythms and levelling. All the while, Bettinson's voice grounds it, mostly straight but sometimes spliced in between the beats.
The Radiohead references are inextricably there – it's almost The King Of Limbs without guitars, even more Atoms For Peace with female vocals – but it still stands on its own as a masterful, and genuinely fun, piece of work.
