A member of/contributor to West Coast post-rock and lo-fi bands such as Xiu Xiu, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and the Dead Science, the multi-instrumentalist Jherek Bischoff here travels to music’s wilder shores on his own, as Ribbons. If Britney Spears’s album is arguably more daring given its context, Royals — for all that it is very much part of the alt canon, and its sudden diversions and veering are thus comparatively less unexpected — rewards similarly forensic attention. The way Bischoff establishes a ghostly ambience on Automatism with shimmering strings and wordless falsetto, only to plunge the song down into something altogether more sinister with ambling upright bass and insistent pizzicato, is typical of an album that is happy wandering where it will go, but never leaves the listener behind.

Osaka OSA012

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