#1042 The Range - Nonfiction

Evoking the emotive instrumental hip-hop of the late 90's, the melodic minimalism of footwork, and the lush perfection of Darkside's latest, this is strangely affecting stuff. Each song deconstructs a single sample as its backbone, chopping it into useable parts to plant seeds and nurture micro-scale nostalgia, while squiggled beats and gloaming synth evolutions outline the contours. There's nothing here that happens only once, and nothing quite happens twice. Look at Jamie, a cut that crafts the impression of a full fledged song out of strikingly few seconds of actual sounds, hyperchorus with the impression of movement, a hip hop Praise You.

That minimalism's nothing new, but its rare to see it packed into forms with so much emotional heft, all of the weight and space and majesty of an M83 track circa Dead Cities built from nothing but echoes, carefully generated, redirected, and rendered solid 4/5