There is a strand of contemporary electronic music which, from what I have heard, has been very underexplored. It was suggested most stridently by Bjork on albums such as Vespertine and the soundtrack to Dancer In The Dark. The strand is that of abstract, atmospheric and even glitchy, musical impressions with overtly melodic pop songs sung over the top. Renfro explore that territory on Mathematics and do so quite successfully.
I’ll leave the Bjork comparisons behind after mentioning that Renfro lack the distinctiveness of the former’s voice and the idiosyncrasy of her melodic meanderings. However, they do make this their own music and are definitely not aiming at mere facsimilie. A consistency of production values runs through the album with small, static-y sounds, random pulses and subtle synth accents dominating. Over this, dream-like vocals sing catchy pop songs quietly, reminding me mostly of early 70s Pink Floyd – definitely a good thing in my view. Lyrically, there’s a cohesive blend of spirituality and cyber-futurism, best summed up in the refrain from ‘Add / Subtract’ of “Numbers come/mathematics begun/born again from the mouth of the sun/binary code/invented in time/decimal points/dissolve and unwind”. It could sound a little twee, but it fits perfectly into the sonic context. It almost sounds like folk music at times – but folk music re-imagined to suit the glow of an lcd screen rather than a campfire.
I might normally pick out some highlights at this point, but I don’t know that I’d claim any highlight tracks on this release. Mathematics is consistently good right across its 55 minutes. This is a subtle and beautiful album.
Adrian Elmer
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