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Lithops, "Scrypt"
Sonig (DE) / Thrill Jockey (US)
Jan St. Werner has a way of keeping the flavor-seal closed tight.There's a freshness to everything he gets his hands on that isdownright addictive. When Mouse on Mars broke out, they gave bliss-outelectronic the funky backbone it needed to stay interesting; likewisein Microstoria, Werner contributed a tender roundness to Markus Popp'sdigital landscape. Scryptis the third album from St. Werner's more abstract solo projectLithops, and where the first two treaded heavily in a shaky land ofbedroom concréte and dissected electro, Scrypt marks aninvigoration of the Lithops sound.The obscure cover-art and vaguely archaic title paint an accuratepicture of the music inside. The common thread is, more than ever, St.Werner's layering of distorted drones and static pulse. This timearound, however, the cohesion achieved makes the even most complextracks sound elemental, as if gathered from the air. The first track,"Generator," acts as an overture, condensing the gamut of distortedplanes in which almost everything here is submerged. Throughout thedisc, as melody emerges from the fray, it is constructed of rich,droning bass and frayed, stuttering high notes. While on earlierLithops releases a deliberately "underproduced" quality permeated, on Scrypt,it has been tempered by a refined attention to placement. A cleartouchstone for much of this album would be the music of ChristianFennesz, except here somber guitars are replaced by bits of saccharinepop bliss and plodding bass notes, fractured in and out of the waves ofstatic. "Graind" contains a melodic hook that would easily feel at homein a DAT Politics tune.As always with St. Werner and the rest of his Sonig buddies, theelement of surprise is at a premium. Horns, woodwinds, trashcanpercussion, plunking guitars, and all variety of concréte pandering areat work creating music that is at once playful, challenging, and evenmelancholic. As with recent Mouse on Mars material, St. Werner standsalone here in his ability to rend unorthodox rhythms from the mostdiverse sonic tidbits and to bend these around an equally impressivearray of instruments. The results are never boring, and this is thebest Lithops music yet.
Jan St. Werner has a way of keeping the flavor-seal closed tight.There's a freshness to everything he gets his hands on that isdownright addictive. When Mouse on Mars broke out, they gave bliss-outelectronic the funky backbone it needed to stay interesting; likewisein Microstoria, Werner contributed a tender roundness to Markus Popp'sdigital landscape. Scryptis the third album from St. Werner's more abstract solo projectLithops, and where the first two treaded heavily in a shaky land ofbedroom concréte and dissected electro, Scrypt marks aninvigoration of the Lithops sound.The obscure cover-art and vaguely archaic title paint an accuratepicture of the music inside. The common thread is, more than ever, St.Werner's layering of distorted drones and static pulse. This timearound, however, the cohesion achieved makes the even most complextracks sound elemental, as if gathered from the air. The first track,"Generator," acts as an overture, condensing the gamut of distortedplanes in which almost everything here is submerged. Throughout thedisc, as melody emerges from the fray, it is constructed of rich,droning bass and frayed, stuttering high notes. While on earlierLithops releases a deliberately "underproduced" quality permeated, on Scrypt,it has been tempered by a refined attention to placement. A cleartouchstone for much of this album would be the music of ChristianFennesz, except here somber guitars are replaced by bits of saccharinepop bliss and plodding bass notes, fractured in and out of the waves ofstatic. "Graind" contains a melodic hook that would easily feel at homein a DAT Politics tune.As always with St. Werner and the rest of his Sonig buddies, theelement of surprise is at a premium. Horns, woodwinds, trashcanpercussion, plunking guitars, and all variety of concréte pandering areat work creating music that is at once playful, challenging, and evenmelancholic. As with recent Mouse on Mars material, St. Werner standsalone here in his ability to rend unorthodox rhythms from the mostdiverse sonic tidbits and to bend these around an equally impressivearray of instruments. The results are never boring, and this is thebest Lithops music yet.
