The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn

Touch and Go

CocoRosie channels a strange concoction of genres that make it difficult to classify. The Chicago duo have created evocative atmospheres in their earlier works. Given the surreal moods they generate, one could imagine them as the 3-AM lounge act in a Kubrickean hotel bar.

With The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn, they continue their trajectory into unfamiliar terrain. This time, they incorporate a broader panoply of sounds from bicycle bells, toy instruments, or just someone spinning a coin. What's nice about their work is the huge space in their sound, marked by distant and often operatic vocals along with restrained casiobox beats or spare piano. Many songs, like "Promise," "Bloody Twins," and "Animals," attain moments of beauty with Portishead cadences and vocals that might come from warped James Bond theme-song divas. With "Japan," the eccentricities reaches it peak as if a nightmarish children's song, with of distorted background vocals from an array of villains. While perhaps not their best work, the album is a solid piece that fits their mold without mimicking their past. But, their effort to experiment even further with their sound tacks on some substance that adds yet another reason why CocoRosie is a group that one should pay attention to.

Bill Angelbeck

Andrew Pekler

Cue

Kranky

Pekler has a fascination with libraries of music for film, television, and commercials €“€“ those anonymous creations annotated with terse descriptions of the piece, so one can find suitable accompiament for a particular scene. Titling this album, Cue, in a similacrum of that format, Pekler provides similar notations for this electronic project to guide its playing for the appropriate moment: "Rockslide" (4:57) is noted as "Nostalgic mid-tempo pathos for widescreen drama, slide-guitar + electronic effects"; "Contact" (4:44) as "Insistent triangle feature with semi-squelchy electronics"; and "Roomsound" (4:08) as "Ambiguous Western atmosphere resolving into children's tune, swirling cymbals added." What's left for a reviewer to do? In truth, don't let those catalogue descriptions deceive you €“€“ it underplays an inventive electronica that is crisp in production and lively in its near-pop sensibility, which is rare to find in electronic instrumental pieces. These open-source soundtracks are informed by glitch and noise, and Pekler demonstrates a geographers grasp of the terrain and textures of his sounds. Plus, he skillfully incorporates acoustic elements into the synthetic ones. The mightier moments of the album are his handling of warbled pitch shifts on tracks like "Rockslide." A drawback is that there is certain detachment in these tracks, perhaps intentional as a consequence of the library catalogue approach, but ultimately making it somewhat less engaging. Still, it's quality electronica, fitting and readymade for filing in anyone's electronica library.

Bill Angelbeck