Trashcan-lid drum hits beat against a calcium shell of off-white noise until it punctures — a trickle of math rock yolk seeps down the static hum’s pale paunch like a neutralized pimple’s red teardrop. Its contents are collected in a squat coffee mug painted the waning orange of a Muppet’s flesh. The embryonic idea for an unrealized American Football tune rests in the dregs of the mug, wallowing in a puddle of reverb albumin. Wobbly kicks and clattering snares whisk the hatched ambience into a hypnagogic groove.
The resulting eggbeaten slurry forms “Please Stay Seated,” the cut that opens pill for doll’s pleasantly sedative new LP titled Clusted. Threading its fragments of fleecy synthesizer through blown out, jazzy production, traversing the Russian trip-hop outfit’s latest record from end to end feels like running wind sprints in the shallow end of a public swimming pool: it’s refreshing and scarily immersive, the drag of the standing water pulling you gravitationally towards a solid floor of fuzz. Jams like “Citizen On Acid” and “Scum BBQ” are as relaxing as they are spooky: creeping wisps of dissonance sewn into their dronescapes, these warm sonic tapestries give the feeling of curling up under a comforter with a hot cup of coffee, unshaken though a cataclysmic blizzard quickly approaches.