Labradford
Mi Media Naranja

Perfect music: imagine a merging of Lynch's distorting hallucinations and Wenders' visionary, dramatic poetry, codify its imaginative power, and project this against the backdrop of the theme of travel. A journey during which subjects alternate like dust carried on the rocks of time: cinematic ambient (with well-embedded Morricone-like sounds), minimal electronics, isolationist post-rock.

This is "Mi Media Naranja" (Spanish expression, literally "The other half of the orange", meaning one’s intimate condition, the other self): frozen melodies, trails and scars of sound, whispered words, solitudes and dissolutions, prolonged chords in a loop, intangible rhythms from which strings occasionally emerge or the languid touch of a piano. Almost a concept, Labradford's work describes a nocturnal walk through quiet and melancholic desert streets and vistas.

A strategically dark work from whatever angle you view it. As always, slowness is very much present and often transforms into immobility (I would almost say ecstatic), which has always been the hallmark of Kranky, a historical indie label in the U.S., of which "these guys" have always been the main flag-bearers (just consider that their first album "Prazision" has the catalog number 001!).

In a completely natural way, there is no more space for words, for texts, and the isolationism (as I have learned, now also media-related) of the Virginia trio manifests in the titles of the seven long included tracks, reduced to simple letters. All this enriches with additional intoxicating charm an album that feeds on lethargic pulsations and soft sonic caresses that transport the listener to a sort of state of semi-consciousness. The power of sound's staticity (because it's about "sound", certainly not songs): nothing seems to move, not even the air, across the first three tracks.

Further on, narcoleptic and western-themed tunes remain trapped in ethereal yet profoundly deep bass lines, always keeping in mind that ambient drifts are always there in gentle ambush. Perfect music, as I mentioned at the start. Perfect, no, nothing is ever perfect, but organic, yes. Organic even if never improvised. Composed beforehand in small and exhausting steps (by their own admission), it is then recorded in the studio in a single live take. This makes the Labradfordian sounds almost like a painting: any retouch can seem gaudy and out of place.

In short, the album that many consider the most post-rock of Labradford, assuming that term still means anything, is actually simple and wonderful music of the soul. In any case, a confirmation of the state of grace (then and now) of a formation capable of painting sparse but well-defined musical landscapes despite the mournful and almost minimal advance of the instruments. This is their true strength.

Hard to imagine a better soundtrack for an acid trip in the Grand Canyon...