- Charles Drakeford may not be the first Boiler Room affiliate to get his label up and running—Bradley Zero's Rhythm Section and Nic Tasker's Whities precede him. But he manages to out-weird his colleagues by some margin with the debut release on FTD. To date Lutto Lento is mostly known for cassettes, and mostly for longform collage pieces addressing the turbulent history of his native Poland (Partition on Jehu & Chinaman; Dutch Gór on his own Sangoplasmo). Sourced partly from self-released tape Unlucky, Lento's debut vinyl release follows the familiar path from these esoteric realms onto the dance floor. But it does so with such deviance that it's worth giving it a fresh pair of ears.
The best places to start are the most instantly gratifying: "Sirena," which undergirds a waltzing Enya sample with breezy house drums, followed by the warbling strings of "Gipsi Sam." Neither really go anywhere per se—development isn't Lento's strongpoint—but they do get incrementally weirder ("Sirena"'s "fish... fish and seabirds" probably takes the prize). In the new wave-tinged noodlings of "Prima Porta" that weirdness is sadly missed, but elsewhere it goes into overdrive. "I Remember I Was Dreaming" is an all-the-white-notes synth etude in the Hype Williams style; the mundane chatter in the latter half is almost obscured by the plink-plonk. "The Boat Can Leave Now," meanwhile, opens with what could be an English language learning aid, an inane dialogue about a cruise trip, all childlike elocution and forced laughter, and ends with a business's automated phone message. There's a beat in between, but you might be too baffled to pay it much attention.
TracklistA1 I Remember I Was Dreaming
A2 Sirena
A3 Gipsi Sam
B1 Prima Porta
B2 The Boat Can Leave Now