- Like Boards of Canada, Vector Lovers or Border Community's old guard, Rob Lee's work as Wax Stag exists in a British lineage of pastoral electronica. In its warm retro sound and its wide-eyed, awestruck melodies, II, his new album, evokes an '80s British childhood of newly exciting Atari video games, summers spent outdoors and, on the TV, a diet of David Attenborough documentaries and the pop-science futurism of the BBC's Tomorrow's World. It is a record steeped in the sounds of early computer technology, but one similarly inspired by the natural world.
A multi-instrumentalist who has toured with artists as diverse as White Lies and Clark, Lee keeps his own music almost confrontationally simple. His tempos hover around 110 BPM, and the tracks themselves consist of little more than crisp, vintage drum machine rhythms, bobbling bass lines and a minimum of slickly interlocking synth patterns. Those synths ripple like water running over smooth pebbles or sparkle like sunlight hitting a stream. There is zero production trickery. II hinges on its melodic ingenuity.
At times this cute-and-cuddly record lacks a bit of dirt under its fingernails. But when the stars align, Lee hits on a pristine emotional pitch so honest and open it's impossible to resist. "Woodland Walk" is as refreshing as chilled lemonade, while "Cloud Cake" takes that childlike tone and, with an injection of bass and Eurodisco cool, conjures a Utopian moment (and potential nu-disco floor-filler). II gets even better when Lee teases out the wistful, faded-Polaroid quality of his music. "The Greatest Grace" and particularly the purring, poignant "Summit" are beautiful in their bittersweet ambiguity.
Tracklist01. Woodland Walk
02. Valley Of Ice
03. Cloud Cake
04. Sparkling River
05. Caverns
06. Night Trek
07. Race To The Lake
08. The Greatest Grace
09. Summit