Continuing to evoke an unearthly quality visually reinforced by their habit of wearing rabbit masks in live performance,
Lingering
is the fourth long-player from
Sleep Party People
and the post-rock project's debut for
Joyful Noise
. The work of Danish multi-instrumentalist
Brian Batz
, who often performs live with a backing band, is typically diverse but uniformly off-kilter, and
is no exception. The 12-track set, which includes titles like "Odd Forms" and "Fainting Spell," ranges from the rhythmic and mournfully melodic to more ambient dreamscapes, excelling where he combines all of the above.
Batz
's
Thom Yorke
-like airy high range, sonorous acoustic drums, insistent bass, and a mix of industrial-leaning timbres and spacy synth and guitar effects makes for an anxious opening track suitable for the dance floor in "Figures." Elsewhere, "Salix and His Soil" opens like a classic Atari game with warm, melodic tones, hyper beats, and unsettling scraping sounds. The floatier "The Missing Steps" shimmers and warps along a vocal melody that's doubled by accompaniment, both instrumental and, eventually, human. Additional vocalists (including a featured performance by one-time
Air
collaborator
Beth Hirsch
) and drummer
Anders Bach
are the only other performers on the record, with
covering everything else. The whole album is kind of weird and beautiful and, as if it weren't already an oddity, can double as surreal background music or engrossing headphone material. ~ Marcy Donelson