This morning, I saw reviews of the Postal Service’s re-release of their album, Give Up, begin to appear on various websites. What struck me was that I could potentially, by clicking on a link, be reading a newly written review for an album released ten years ago. I immediately questioned why this is a necessary part of the conversation we have about new music. In the end, this is particular re release is ultimately being sold in an attempt to cash in a second time on an album released a decade ago. We do this all of the time, all of this archival technology in front of us, we inevitably always return to the past.
Pop music’s relation to its own past has been a central critical concern for some time now. Whether it is the constant nostalgia stream for a constantly shifting selection of decades on sites like buzzfeed and flavorpill or, in a more studied form, books like Simon Reynold’s Retromania, this relationship to past touchstones and ephemera is a consistent part of our cultural intake. Pop culture resembles a snake eating its own tail. Pop culture has begun to haunt itself, plaguing us with its ghosts.
Thinking of this issue in terms of ghosts/specters is a useful frame for considering Nostalchic, the first full length album by UK artist, Stuart Howard, aka Lapalux. Whether this is through warped vocals or samples that don’t weave into the song so much as intrude on them, these songs are often haunted by other voices and samples (themselves one of the most obvious forms of referencing and working within the past), at times effectively smothering the meek beats and melodies, unable to emerge under the weight of the ghostly presence.
Nostalchic begins with the sound of a scrambled tape reel, eventually opening onto the first track, “IAMSYS.” The reel suggests that this music is cobbled together from scattered bits and pieces, finally coalescing into finished tracks. It is an apt metaphor for Nostalchic, the title itself suggestive of the album’s content, mixing samples and slick beats. Howard’s work fits in nicely with that of Flying Lotus, whose Brainfeeder label released this record. The tape reel is the chaos of sounds and ephemera, itself an outmoded medium, that must be overcome before the music can start. This record often sounds like a struggle of voices trying to gain prominence.
Lapalux plays with this struggle, the samples acting as a very real specter moving throughout each track. In some cases, actually, quite possibly most cases, it is not so much a found sample as an added track so warped and distorted as to seem ghostly/alien. This is not unlike the material James Blake has effectively mined for years, however, where Blake folds them artfully into his minimal melodies, Lapalux maintains a certain friction between them and other elements of the song. The tracks do not entirely come together, which is not a bad thing, it is this friction that makes Nostalchic so compelling. On tracks like “Guurl,” the warped vocal breaks onto one of the more stable melodies on the album, in such a way that it jarringly rips you from that melody. Following that track, “Kelly Brook,” seems to fall apart, unable to put itself together with so many competing samples and sounds.
On tracks where you have a more stable semblance of a melody like “One Thing,” and “Without You,” Howard creates quiet, eerie music heavy on melancholy. The feeling here is grey and rainy, with guest vocalists only adding to this ultimately heartbreaking effect. These tracks are, perhaps, not as engaging as “Guurl,” but add to the album’s emotional landscape. One where, amidst these competing sounds and voices, there is a certain loneliness.
Nostalchic is an exciting debut and establishes Howard/Lapalux as an act to pay attention to. This music, haunted as it is, brings us to our own haunted moment. By correctly identifying the prevailing spectral atmosphere, Nostalchic sounds fresh and is a welcome change from a string of releases that seem like exercises in nostalgia for a falsely remembered past.
Grade: A-
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