- Are "electronic" bands becoming a thing again? London trio Circle Traps (two of whom moonlight in Portico Quartet) do a surprisingly decent job at not sounding like a bunch of overambitious students trying to make dance music with guitars, ending up somewhere in the realm of atmospheric garage instead.
Their choice of introductory track holds a debt to fellow band Mount Kimbie's beginnings: "Fjord" is every bit the counterpart to "Maybes," conjuring up a crashing 2-step rhythm that cuts through a fog of melancholic dust. The first time I heard it I was completely bowled over: the whole thing is almost too self-consciously beautiful, even saccharine, as synths dot the skies in coordinated twinkling. "Mirrors and Monuments" plays to the same page, adding defeated saxophone wails that imitate Burial's dusty chord stabs as sounds linger and echo in the surprisingly spacious backdrop, and "Perspex, Glass" peppers its ultra-slow crawl with snippets of music hall piano and murmurs from vocalist Cornelia.
"Bo! Symbol" is the most band-oriented track, as snippets of horns and snazzy drum fills convulse in heavily manipulated loops, but it never quite forms the structured beat they're aiming for. Label head Subeena's remix leans towards the sleepy techno direction of her own recent work, and she rearranges those loose elements for a tighter vision of the band's aesthetic. While at times the implementation of live instruments can feel arbitrary, or the band's melodic melodrama too reaching, the sensibilities they show here are promising, and derivative or not, "Fjord" particularly is too arresting to ignore even in a world full of similarly overstuffed 2-step mutations.
Tracklist 01. Fjord
02. Bo! Symbol
03. Mirrors & Monuments
04. Perspex, Glass (feat. Cornelia)
05. Bo! Symbol (Subeena remix)