Aeroc – R+B=?
Ghostly: 2011
In the early and mid aughts, led by John Hughes’ seminal Chicago label Hefty, a slew of records prominently featuring meticulously glitched drum-machine beats with primarily acoustic instrumentation were coming out, most notably Guillermo Scott Herren’s ‘Savath & Savalas’ project, which tweaked cellos, acoustic guitars, found sound and melodic drones into a comforting palette that felt like sipping spicy Spanish red wine in a comfortable chair with a blanket and a good book. That type of sound sound seems to have fallen off the map a bit, with some downtempo electronic acts gravitating more towards a bassy, more bombastic style informed by hip-hop and dubstep and others leaning more towards the hazy, toned-down indie rock influences of chillwave. On R+B=?, out now on Ghostly International, Aeroc (who’s also a highly-regarded minimal techno producer under his real name, Geoff White) harkens back to those bygone days, creating unmistakably electronic rhythms consisting primarily of clicks, whirrs and glitches, leaving tons of creepy drones and negative space, and humanizes the whole sound with his nimble, jazzy acoustic guitar playing.
White’s previous release as Aeroc, 2004’s Viscous Solid, was much more ambient and experimental than R+B=?, often going entirely percussionless and leaning strongly towards horror-movie soundtrack wind noises and atonal droning, whereas this new release is a bit more coherent. The minimal techno influence here is strong, as none of these tracks suffer from an excess of sound, and the album as a whole comes across more as one large piece with several movements than as a collection of songs. Where it works (“If I Had The Time”, “For Sake”, and “Playing String” are particularly strong), it sounds like a refreshingly unholy union of early-period Telefon Tel Aviv or vintage Múm with the smoothest campfire acoustic guitar picking you’ve ever heard- it’s engaging and pretty, a great album to clean your house by on a hung-over Sunday, richly textured background sound for dusting bookshelves or maintaining your urban gardening endeavors. However, great background music doesn’t always constitute great music- the last track on the album, “All For Now”, stoops to smooth-jazz cliches, sounds an awful lot like an elevator Muzak remix of an outtake from George Benson’s Breezin’, and there are certainly points where the whole project becomes, well, a touch boring.
That said, R+B=? is a very nice ‘quiet night at home’ album. Sparse, glitchy and loaded with unobtrusive guitar virtuosity (perhaps the first and last time I’ll ever get to use those three words in a row) it will definitely appeal to headphone geeks and aspiring lucid dreamers. It may not be the most memorable or gripping work in the extensive Ghostly International canon, but is certainly rewarding enough to be a good situational listen, particularly if you like your beats subtle.
2.5 out of 5