RL/VL - Chagrin

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  • The sex appeal of ambient is to see how long you can go with so little, until you go crazy and fulfillment rushes in to sweeten your spots. The problem with a damn lot of ambient is that they keep you holding on for so long with your teeth grit that they unlearn how to deliver the payoff. They pulse with such denial that they become denial themselves, akin to a lover that won't listen, no map and all endurance. Maybe part of what makes Jack Hamill so exciting is that he's barely legal, but maybe it isn't. Minimalism isn't exactly thought of as kids' stuff, though laptoppers from Aphex Twin to Four Tet are always trying to mimic childlike feelings themselves. And Raymond Scott's Soothing Sounds for Baby makes it a point to soothe via repetitions that supposedly a baby can understand. Hamill, AKA RL/VL, is thankfully too young to understand the sadie-masie crawl supposedly required of minimalists, and whenever his small, melodic textures threaten to disappear they always return calmly, in themes and droves and memorable parts, from two minute intros to extended ponderings. With its somewhat cynical title, it's a surprise that Chagrin is so sweet, evoking erotic sighs and moans heard off in the distance rather than one-bedroom alienation in a city hostel or something. "Utility," the four-note staircase that ushers in the record quickly cedes to the window thumps and let-me-in tugs of what sounds like processed violin before turning around to return home back through the snow in the cracked fog of "Four Piece Suite," which bears a strong Boards of Canada influence. The underlying hook throughout the whole is that you can feel the spare alienation melting off every track, which become warmer and warmer as the thing wisps along at a floe pace. Happy bleeps lean over and tap your shoulder for strong Sunday morning coffee on "Dihn." "Cedar Point" drums on a glass piano and catches raindrops with a straw. "Kweens" is elegiac organ noise heard through the church basement window. And it never stops evoking, which is how you could tell there was youth in it without even knowing Hamill's only 18. The imagination's too wild and unrefined to sleep.
  • Tracklist
      01. Utility 02. Dinosaurs 03. Four Piece Suite 04. Paint Covered Flags 05. Kweens 06. Double Bed Sleep Pain Away – Part One 07. Double Bed Sleep Pain Away – Part Two 08. A Lake You Could Walk On 09. Double Bed Sleep Pain Away – Part Three 10. Dihn 11. Portrush 12. Cedar Point 13. Complaining Til the Bitter End
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