1991's breathtaking, elegiac debut album High Tech High Life was an undoubted highlight of Boomkat Editions' 2012. They loved it so much they just had to ask Opal Tapes if they could reissue it on vinyl; and now here it is. The chimeric, enigmatic output of one talented yung'un from Gothenburg, Sweden, it isolates and teases out that sort of melancholic, nostalgic new age wow-and-flutter that makes records by Boards Of Canada, Oneohtrix Point Never, and JD Emmanuel such evergreens on our bedroom shelves. Filtering spine-tingling synth arpeggios through gauzy, low-vis ferric murk, it rarely fails to register that ineffable, piloerect effect, regularly turning up the sort of lump-in-the-throat hooks and moments that leave you blinking and gratified with a life-affirming sensitivity. In a sense, the density of tape noise almost borders on the extreme at times, perhaps simulating the effect of a well-worn and much-loved private pressing recently thawed from deep-freeze storage, or maybe best compared to Grouper casting her magic on offcuts of S.A.W. II. But there's also a sort of economy of melodic resolution that's somehow inseparable from his icy North European locale, sharing that elusive, yearning, hauntological quality with, say, Burial or Pye Corner Audio, a coming to terms with rose-tinted futures past.
You might also be interested in...
© 2021 bentcrayonrecords.com, llc.
