Under-heralded national treasure Sandro Perri has spent the past few years decompressing from the comparatively traditional and intensely composed song-based progressive folk-fusion of 2013's brilliant Impossible Spaces (his second release under his own name) with a series of joyously exploratory collaborations recorded as the appropriately named Off World.
This music is out there. Space is definitely the place Perri evokes on this second volume of oddly compelling, highly experimental sonic excursions. It's hard to find firm reference points for these often nebulous compositions; Perri and company splice together elements of many disparate strains of music with no regard for convention. A track built around a subtly askew bass loop, cricket chirps, skittering percussion, bizarre synth textures and odd snippets of melody sits next to a sparse piece of echoing electronic drums, eerie whistling and abstract reverberations, which then give way to interstellar lounge music featuring smoky piano, elastic synth bass and swirling barrages of effects-laden sound arrangements.
That's just the first three (of ten) tracks — and 2 doesn't get any more stylistically cohesive or easier to describe. Despite the refusal to settle on a single planet of sound, the alien sonics lend a feeling of spiritual kinship to the songs that, together, gives the album a distinct vibe. Were that vibe to bear a name, it might be "Tortoise scoring a nihilistic interstellar spy comedy for David Lynch." Hopefully that'll help you guess if this brand of inventive weirdness is your bag.
(Constellation)This music is out there. Space is definitely the place Perri evokes on this second volume of oddly compelling, highly experimental sonic excursions. It's hard to find firm reference points for these often nebulous compositions; Perri and company splice together elements of many disparate strains of music with no regard for convention. A track built around a subtly askew bass loop, cricket chirps, skittering percussion, bizarre synth textures and odd snippets of melody sits next to a sparse piece of echoing electronic drums, eerie whistling and abstract reverberations, which then give way to interstellar lounge music featuring smoky piano, elastic synth bass and swirling barrages of effects-laden sound arrangements.
That's just the first three (of ten) tracks — and 2 doesn't get any more stylistically cohesive or easier to describe. Despite the refusal to settle on a single planet of sound, the alien sonics lend a feeling of spiritual kinship to the songs that, together, gives the album a distinct vibe. Were that vibe to bear a name, it might be "Tortoise scoring a nihilistic interstellar spy comedy for David Lynch." Hopefully that'll help you guess if this brand of inventive weirdness is your bag.