(Bedroom Community / Inertia)

Every thing is melancholy underground

I won’t be able to do this album justice. I want to make that plain from the start. Valgeir Sigurdsson – better known as the producer for acts like Bjork, CocoRosie and Bonnie “Prince” Billy – has created a record as dark as it is beautiful, and as inherently Icelandic as it is worldly. His sculptured beats are like a subterranean Ebb (whose album Loona is a drifting pop revelation), with pulsing strings pulling the heart from side to side. His use of a prepared piano (a la Germany’s Volker Bertelmann) adds an assertive flourish to tracks like Focal Point. The chimes echo and pan from ear to ear, feeling like an orchestra in some cavernous underground abode. It’s as if Brian Eno and The Boards Of Canada met Where Alph the sacred river ran, through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea. And then made some of the most competent compositions you’ll hear this year.

JAKEB SMITH

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