Laurine Frost
VANAGLORIA
(CLEAR VINYL)
Thema / thema030
Coloured 12 Inch
Laurine Frosts long overdue second EP for Thema is upon us in all its dark, oblique splendor. 2009s Thematique showed the mysterious Hungarian producers deft sound design and uncanny programming married with a wide breadth of musical tastes and unpredictable choices of composition. It seems that these attribute have only sharpened and are now driving a much more groove-focused approach. So enjoy this, yet another left turn from Thema. We are proud to bring you the best from those artists working beyond the well-worn paths of electronic dance music and we are glad Laurine could come back to guide us just a little farther off that path. Pressing on transparent vinyl.
Vanagloria barrels straight into the deep with the seismic bass rumbles of "Ode for Liars" with Laurine's signature percussive editing techniques driving the track through moody, cinematic terrain. The tension thickens with the appearance of low slung Balkan brass rising from the digital ether. Following that, "Daytona" shows Laurine shifting his sound, injecting a broken boss nova beat with long soft peals of Miles Davis-style trumpets stretching into elastic oscillations. The flip opens with the beatless "New Reality". American Poet Laureate Amiri Baraka's fierce Nixon-era poetic slam on the state of entertainment and it's role as equal parts distraction and social control are spit all over an eerie modular synth flutter and a huge rolling bass line. The tension created is enough to sustain a track twice its' length, but this is merely a taste of Laurine's haunting, world weary meditations on life outside of The Club. Eschewing meditation for straight groove, "Circulation" bounces through it's first half with tight percussion and a subdued acid that sets up more of that lovely modular business we heard earlier. Surgical syncopation holds the track together while the melody lifts you into the stratosphere.[info from wa]