THOSE familiar with the origins of what came to be tagged “post-rock” will be thrilled to hear that two-thirds of Virginia’s pioneering ambient group Labradford have combined once more to record a follow-up to 2014’s eponymous debut, released on the label with whom Robert Donne and Mark Nelson have been associated since Labradford’s 1993 debut Prazision LP.
While the broiling wash of synthesizers and digital manipulation continues, Epithymia differs from its predecessor in the absence of Steven Hess’s arresting percussion, which shepherded Donne and Nelson’s lugubrious abstractions into territory that might engage listeners with little time for epic but inarguably esoteric musical inquiry.
Epithymia – Ancient Greek for desire – is none the worse for its beatless foundations, however. Perhaps as a nod to Anjou’s new arrhythmical world the opening Culicinae is scarred with bursts of chewed-up cymbal noise, while the introduction of meandering coronets to the parched palette of An Empty Bank is a masterstroke, evoking the entropic desolation of Labradford’s cavernous 1995 album A Stable Reference. The near-11-minute Soucouyant, meanwhile, unfurls at a glacial pace to reveal pinballing electronic motifs atop a pulsing slow bass shuffle in 3/4 time.
Frequently transcendent and never less than majestic, Epithymia warrants close attention from those with a thirst for 21st-century ambient music.
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