With Over-Under, Montreal-based composer Drew Gragg conjures those rapt moments of music that burst from solitude. Heres an artist who understands boredom, its sublime ambience, and how an idea builds to wake you from it.
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‘Adsr Toms’ takes three things, a piano, a fuzzy pitched drum and an infectious rim-shot that shape and reshape before dropping casually into the proximity of a gentle four-four. Grooves build to elegant cairns, sounding of stones as they beat in a cold undertow. Sometimes things seem formless. On ‘Ostinate’, a piano and pillowy tape hiss play alone before a single bounding kick threads their sounds together. Gragg studied jazz guitar and classical composition before beginning to explore electroacoustic production. His experience manifests in an elegant intention of melody that drives and switches directions thoughtfully throughout. While one might say “techno,” or “downtempo,” ‘Over-Under’ defies obvious labels with a clear-eyed fascination in the bare mechanics of sound. Results are spare and meticulous, musical sparks of mathematical intricacy, without a bit of lost humanity.