- Irish producer Donnacha Costello sometimes hits a sweet spot with his tracks, where conceptual consistency meets structural fortitude. That his infamous color series of singles and subsequent 6x6=36 project comprise his best productions to date suggests, without the buttress these concepts provide, he flails a little. (Though if anything links "It Simply Is" and "Trust," it's one of the constants of all Costello's techno tracks: his fondness for (prosaically put) "old sounds.")
This goes some way toward explaining why "It Simply Is" has me thinking more of The Human League's The Dignity Of Labour EP than, say, Studio 1 or Concept 1. The track's grounded by a simple, naked arpeggio pattern straight from the early '80s school of nascent electro-pop, and like the aforementioned Human League record, it shivers with protean grace. Variations come from minute changes in the pattern, or swooping, gliding synth sweeps that smear the background, as though a painter has suddenly applied a roller to the most delicate of canvases. This breaks up "It Simply Is"'s pointillism quite nicely, though in the end it's a mood piece: lovely to listen to, achingly poignant if you're in the right mood, but slightly flimsy.
"Trust" shares its flipside's emotional tone—it's pensive and slightly melancholy, which proves there's not much separating Donnacha Costello of now from the Costello who produced moist, sad-eyed ambience for Mille Plateaux. "Trust"'s descending melody, drifting into earshot around the two minute mark, glints and glimmers like tears rolling down a porcelain doll's cheeks, and this combined with the hissy, insistent rhythm track reminds a little of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works '85-'92, something I certainly wasn't expecting. And while "Trust" is almost methodical in its plotting of slight variations on a theme, it's highly effective—almost hypnotic. A great single, then, though I suspect Costello's going to be working a while longer to make it out from under the color series's shadows.
TracklistA It Simply Is
B Trust