UK-based electronic producer Alastair Brown first starting producing under the Northcape moniker back in 2003, before subsequently self-releasing his 2005 debut album ‘Letter To Nowhere’ and its 2007 follow-up ‘Detach’ via the internet. Two years on from his preceding 2008 ‘Some Bright Valley’ EP on the Monotonic netlabel, this third album ‘Captured From Static’ represents Brown’s first release for Sun Sea Sky and sees him continuing to craft lush, chilled-out melodic landscapes that occupy similar territory to the likes of Ulrich Schnauss. There’s certainly a glacial yet immediately approachable atmosphere to tracks such as wavering, hypnotic opening track ‘Doesn’t Feel Like A Long Way’, with the gliding fusion of live-sounding metronomic drum rhythms, twinkling melodic synths and melancholic bass pads conjuring up a vibe that’s equally placed somewhere between Proem-esque chilled IDM and a motorik post-rock informed glide that hints at the influence of shoegazer elements.
Rather than becoming mired in the usual arsenal of complex micro-edits and effects so often associated with this type of post-IDM music, it’s particularly impressive that the eleven tracks collected here see Brown avoiding over-complexity, instead allowing them to build their own momentum with a comparatively stripped back palette of melodic elements. It’s an aesthetic approach that particularly bears fruit on tracks such as the swooning ‘Approaching The Trig Point’ with its echoing wall of blurred-out melodic swirls beautifully intersecting with motorik drum machines and elegant yet frigid melodic arpeggios, and dreamlike highlight ‘Indigo Line’, which sees wavering harmonic drones adding a slightly disorienting Boards Of Canada-like edge that nicely counterpoints the brittle broken rhythmic elements and swirling synth pad arrangements that play above – the atmosphere generated calling to mind a slow motion take on one of Orbital’s widescreen arrangements. In this case, the comparative simplicity proves to be one of Northcape’s biggest strengths, making ‘Captured From Static’ something of a slowburning treat for fans of chilled melodic electronics.
Chris Downton
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