Vorad Fils, the project of Sydney musician John Hassell marks the final installment of the Pow Wow new music series in an apt bright minimal electronic outing. Static filled glockenspiel Android Creche, is a sparse gleaming clockwork mechanical ambience which provides an excellent doorway into an album. Sort of like a windup toy for children sparkling enthusiasm and captivation. Consider the album in the same light as the work of Lullatone, almost as music for babies, gleaming shards of light, woven into patterns to excite, fill with wonder and entertain. Even the addition of vocalist Giselle Rosselli on Lioness bespeaks a wistful attitude of a lion from a childs book, rather than the jungle of the night.
Warm static introduces more the technical focus of Hassell, with its attenuated and extended forms, the use of static as a wrap around emotion. Safe is a beat form, more broken, sucked back samples, trick heavy, almost a number of form, but not quite any. Polarity akin to a broken down stuttering video game approaching a downbeat slap wonder. Temple Leak, takes a more building hip hop beatsmith approach heavy on the glitched static and sucking beats and samples braking down in repeat and melancholy. Title track The Warmest Static, bemoans an accordion centerpiece with ambient tonal layers, static throws, and vocal harmonies under building it’s gruffness with an idealistic lightness and harmony.
It is the simplicity of Hassell’s work that is a pleasure. The rich tone and effortless musicianship is there, a keen ear for building easily receivable tracks as well as confounding the expectation of form. Mastering of the album by Ivan Vizintin is crisp and wide and does justice to the album. If let down by anything, it is perhaps the album coherence, which if built on the simplicity of the opening, to a logical extended epic form, would have made it an indomitable repeat button pusher.
Innerversitysound
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