Review Summary: Renovated idioteques
Quick thought experiment: what's
Kid A without the legacy? Strip off the context of rock-innovators-gone-techno-futurist, the scads of critics and fans gushing over its foresight re: 21st-century emotional atomization and isolation, and what's underneath it all? Far as I'm concerned, underneath it all we have a concise yet diverse set of moody, atmospheric tracks straddling the line between alternative rock and electronic, no more and no less. So when I say that Slow Transits' new album
Trans-Atlantic Test Flight "sounds like
Kid A", that's what I mean. It's a little bit of chilly programmed beats 'n' keys, a little bit of angst-ridden voice 'n' guitar, and a whole lot of interesting, production-driven soundscapes to immerse yourself in. Just like
Kid A! Except, y'know, updated for two-plus decades of developing styles and shifting tastes in the wide wide world of independent music. And with less of a recording budget, I assume. Yay!
20 years is a long way from the days when the fussy, twitching arrhythmias of Autechre and the placid minimalism of Brian Eno dominated the conversation around rock-respectable bleep bloops, though, and thank goodness for it! The pulsing, abstract noise of "Shaking" is made all the sweeter by the way it melts off from the slinky, almost witch house-esque pocket of "Love Freaks Out", the shifts from danceable to meditative and back working to highlight the album's consistent vibe. Stylishly-integrated modern influences abound all across
Trans-Atlantic Test Flight, from the vocaloids and glitching keys on opener "Zero Year" to the vaportrap nods and blown-speaker drum-n-bass climax of "Cancerous Planets", all tempered in a gritty, depressive DIY vibe. This album is at its hypnotic best when its stylistic flourishes work to imbue the gloomy moods on offer with some drama-of-great-contrast, with the buzz of music nerds nerding out over the sheer volume of electronic et al brilliance we've been blessed with since the new millennium. Slow Transits' more firmly rock-centric inclinations do suffer ever-so-slightly to this end; "Circle Breaking"'s spot-on 90s-alternative pastiche gets somewhat shown up by the spot-even-further-on krautrock pastiche "Telepon!", and "Parallel Moves" could have perhaps benefitted from a middle-eight of some sort, to give its elephantine march a bit more songwriting muscle to trample with. Thankfully, with the help of some solid lyricism (again, 21st-century emotional atomization and isolation- no points for prescience!), neither one kicks up a stink outright, merely falling a notch or two shy of the grooving excellence to be found elsewhere.
Put simply,
Trans-Atlantic Test Flight is a real cool album and everyone with a taste for melancholy and/or stylistic omnivory should give it a shot. It's got the whole shebang- catchy ditties, an ear-pleasingly dense and diverse approach to mixing and mastering, words that might just make you go "damn, I feel that" once or twice. And if it ain't your thing, hey, you'll be in and out in 38 minutes. Eleven less than
Kid A— now THAT'S what I call progress.
