- Silky, subterranean house washed in pop and shoegaze.
- Last summer, Godmode cofounder Nick Sylvester left the company he'd brought to life with artists like Yaeji and Channel Tres to start a new project, smartdumb. According to the website, smartdumb is "also known as the interrobang aesthetic… music that begins with a question mark and ends with an exclamation point."
The first release, LP1, is the debut album from Ivana Carrescia, AKA Isola, who worked closely with Sylvester. Interrobang—a punctuation mark combining the question mark and the exclamation mark—is predominantly used to ask an exclamatory rhetorical question (and makes me think of music that encourages the reaction, "WTF is this?"), but I found LP1, at first, to be a softer, more straightforward listening experience than "smartdumb" might suggest.
That's not to say LP1 isn't interesting or scintillating—quite the opposite—but instead of an exclamation, it's more of a tender wash of sparkling sound design, aquatic textures and silky microhouse beats. It lands somewhere between the sweetness and drone of Kelly Lee Owens, Future Disco's 2012 Poolside Sounds compilation (yes, the one that features "Want You In My Soul") and Barker's dazzling, beatless record Utility.
On her debut EP, Carrescia used her voice more as an instrument of honeyed, breathy sounds rather than for singing lyrics. On LP1, she still layers her voice into gorgeous textures, but she also sings, sometimes whispering intimately of a new, intoxicating love. Like on "Too Soon," where the colourful, wiggling synth line exudes giddy optimism as she sings, "I have a really good feeling about this one." Or "Heaven," the most uptempo cut on the album, where the propulsive melody and waves of pads feel like the surface of the ocean glittering in the sunlight. "I'll see you in heaven," Carrescia sings, "By the seaside."
The floating, minimalist rhythms that ripple through the album have already become something of an Isola signature, but LP1 also broadens her horizons. Thick, thumping basslines thread through the album, which also contains sprinkles of video game bleeps ("For Thee I Sing"), ad libs that could have been lifted from a '90s pop song ("Red Balloon") and dubby rhythms ("Prayer"). The record's closing track, "Sundowner," embodies the sunset cocktail it's named after. As Carrescia sings, "It was blazing," the trancey synths and beguiling harmonies make for the most cinematic and soul-stirring moment on the album, the crackle of the synth imitating the hazy heat of the last of the day's sunshine.
At first glance, Isola's music seems bright, breezy and simple, but listen beyond the glimmering veneer and there's an artful attention to detail, like gently putting your ear closer to the cereal bowl and hearing the otherwise-imperceptible snap, crackle and pop on the surface. On the smartdumb website, it says: "there is music hidden in every sound around us." On LP1, microscale intricacies are found at every turn. Just like finding music in every day-to-day sound, every inch of the record has unexpected details that emerge from within.
Tracklist01. Last Winter
02. Too Soon
03. Red Balloon
04. Aquarius
05. Heaven
06. In The Dead Of Night
07. For Thee I Sing
08. Prayer
09. Sundowner