A rare form of hypno-pop meets world-class cosmic drums and bass playing.
A kind of wallpaper pattern with changing components: we see lips and eyes rolling and opening and closing; there is plenty of activity in this pattern. Not the stuff video dreams are made of, but with the voice of Cathy Lucas and the cosmic sonic fabric produced by drummer Valentina Magaletti (who also played for Bat For Lashes and Gruff Rhys) and bassist and chief electronics engineer Susumu Mukai (aka Zongamin). the pattern flickering has a hypnotic quality.
It’s a sound that catapults the pre-single “Afternoon X” out there, like the other seven tracks on the album. Since their first album in 2015, Vanishing Twin have been playing on the idea of a multinational avant-pop that traverses time and space with an unconditional desire for expansion in the style of a pop offshoot of Sun Ra Arkestra. There’s also something of jazz here, when the band seemingly improvises through their universe in the track “Lotus Eater”, except that the part that usually belongs to the saxophone or trumpet is now taken over by analogue synthesizers.
In the “Lazy Garden” Cathy Lucas indulges in idleness, her voice wanders over shaky synthesizer paths, but the clattering and rustling leads to a sound cellar in which one or two serial dead people could be housed. Vanishing Twin travel a long way, but where are they going? Is the piece of psych and electro lounge nostalgia in the footsteps of Stereolab, the future sound that Broadcast always wanted to play, or an echo of a nostalgic future in the here and now, when many can no longer see a future at all? Definitely a great, disturbing, enlightening record.