Spaceheads
Low Pressure
Merge Records
This veteran London-based trumpet-and-drums duo has often explored the contrast between the "old" sounds of their instruments and the modern buzz of electronic programming, but never more successfully than on
Low Pressure. The brass and skins possess a kind of elemental nobility, despite being subjected to all manner of slicing, splicing, layering, looping, and distorting, creating a powerful juxtaposition between the primal energy of live instrumentation and alienated panic of electronic music. The album's soaring trumpet and sinuous rhythms recall jazz, while its glitchy atmospherics suggest IDM, but
Low Pressure is neither, falling in some mysterious point in between, as exotic and fascinating as the surface of the moon.
