Dom Mino’ summons textures and patterns from piano, dulcimer, pattering percussion, and bright acoustic sounds, all of which entwine joyously with fragile voices and shellac crackle on his first full-length, Time Lapse.
It’s all very languid and lax, but it’s played with an exuberance that is utterly compelling. Mino’ takes basic and unadorned sonics and rubs them together like sticks, conveying complex, transporting and healing news. There are stark piano works, which are often more suggestive than concrete in form: “Tuesday”, for example, sees Mino press down on the ivory keys as though they were some of the more frail items on Earth.
There is also an imaginative streak in Mino’s shifting of the mood and manner while simultaneously maintaining a stimulating core. Mino’ guides the album onto the open, breezy fields of compositions such as “Szek”, in which he builds scaffolds of creaky buzz across a sugar-hit loop while an exultant piano melody spirals upward. Sanguine, rhythmical passages lurk around the corner, where galloping beats are daubed with incidental sounds and a color-saturated wah-wah synth melody, its hypnotic spiral stretching across physical and spiritual horizons.
Max Schaefer
