Keramick & Lobo - The Braille via IsraTrance.com - Music Reviews on 9/16/09
Artist: Keramick & Lobo
Album: The Braille
Label: Exogenic Breaks
Artist Website: www.exogenicbreaks.com/artists/keramick_lobo
Label Website: www.exogenicbreaks.com
Tracklist:
1. Lite House
2. Gone
3. Everything You Said Was Lead
4. Answers
5. Whisper Tree
6. Brown-Eyed Susan
7. Won Peels
8. The Braille
Review:
Some days are simply those days. They are hard to describe. The world isn't bleak. The sun is shining. You aren't really tired. You weren't recently dumped or fired; hell, you may have even found something you have long since lost. But for some reason, something is off.
The day does its thing and eventually you get home. You've been longing for that moment for a while and when it comes, it feels better than you remembered. You grab your mail, toss the junk in the recycling, toss the bills in a pile, and open whatever Fun might be leftover. Some days there is no Fun in the mail, other days there is Fun that you've been expecting; then occasionally, there is unexpected Fun waiting for you.
The thing about the unexpected Fun is that you sometimes don't know if it'll be any good. When you've had one of Those Days, sometimes gambling isn't what you want to do. Sometimes you want comfort. The comfort of an old and worn sweatshirt and pajamas. Maybe a soft blanket and the corner of your couch. Those Days can get rather intense.
A few weeks ago I was having one of those days and when I got home, I poured myself a glass of single malt and looked at my new Fun that came in the mail. One of the items was completely unexpected and I had no idea what I might be in store for. I tossed the bio/write-up in the recycling without reading it -because those things are pointless and annoying- and I put the CD into my player. Immediately, I was calmed, absorbed, and enraptured by the atmosphere that was beginning to unfold around me.
Keramick & Lobo have crafted a wonderfully mellow, calming, and entrancing album of softness and compassion. Boards of Canada, Kixotek, Radiohead, Pulseprogramming, Telefon Tel Aviv. These are the worlds that this albums is bound to. Glitchy, atmospheric, soulful, pop n' guitars, vocals n' distorted kicks. Haunting and precious.
Everything that I needed at that moment.
And now, as I am listening to the end of the album for some unknown and virtually countless time, the serenading saxophone ushers me along my quest for peace while the beat of the drum simplistically pounds out its monotonous drone, creating a trance that could welcome in a long coma before the pulse of the heartbeat dissolves and the final lullaby whispers hope into my ear.
This is what good downtempo sounds like. This is an album that I understand. This is quality. This is bliss.
This is Keramick & Lobo. This is The Braille.
Close your eyes and feel it.
xoxox
-A'damn
