Following a ten-year hiatus, multi-instrumentalists Rafael Anton Irisarri and Benoît Pioulard return with How to Color a Thousand Mistakes, their third LP together as Orcas. Building on the electronic minimalism of Orcas (MORR 111CD, 2012) and the Twin Peaks-inspired haze of Yearling (MORR 128CD, 2014), the duo have expanded their sound and vision into a full-spectrum ensemble. Recorded in a variety of studios and cities including Brooklyn, Cambridge, Oxford, Seattle, and upstate New York, the resulting album, under the tutelage of UK producer James Brown (Arctic Monkeys, Kevin Shields, Nine Inch Nails), is a patiently-crafted beast, equally inspired by impressionism, British new wave, and dream pop. With Irisarri's guidance and Brown's encouragement, Pioulard brings his velvety voice to its harmonized peak on songs like "Wrong Way to Fall" and the Durutti Column-indebted "Fare." Where his most recent solo albums for Morr Music (Sylva and Eidetic) navigated foggy forests of ambient pop and stacked tape loops, here his characteristic blur shifts into focus with a unique degree of clarity and confidence. Lead single, "Riptide," is a summary of Pioulard's life changes and personal upheavals in the past decade, "flitting eastward toward a yen deep in the past" and learning to glide through the tumult of ocean waves, as a metaphor for the punches one takes in pursuit of grace. Its towering, key-changing midsection arrives with the monumental drumming of Slowdive's Simon Scott. On third-act highlight, "Bruise," Scott is doubled on the drum kit by MONO's Dahm Majuri Cipolla, whose Liebezeit-influenced metronomy anchors a nimble bass groove from Andrew Tasselmyer (of Hotel Neon), and some of the album's most syncopated, spaced-out interplay, courtesy of Puerto Rican guitar player Orlando Méndez (a childhood friend of Irisarri's). Throughout How to Color a Thousand Mistakes, Irisarri uses his deep well of production experience to paint the stereo field with meticulously designed textures, exemplified on the slow burn of "Heaven's Despite" and the heady rush of "Swells." How to Color a Thousand Mistakes brims with tight, complex art rock songwriting, masterful production, and sonic versatility, informed by a plethora of genres and tonal hues. The title might promise answers, but the gravitational center of the album is the dawning realization that, as you reckon with the infinite whims of the cosmos, there could be none.
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