This second album from Danish electronic musician Anders Remmer has little to do with either dub or tractors; in fact, this music could be characterized as dub in reverse. Instead of sending live instrumentation spiraling into a swimmyheaded abyss, Remmer tracks crisp, organic, clean tones as they emerge from an unthreatening film of percussive glitches and melodic hiss. It's apologetically "warm" and "human," mining tepid lite rock crap from tonally homogenous shoegaze rehashes. These sounds don't melt, warp, refract, or burn — they just plod along to nowhere, content with their inch-deep sheen. While language and narrative certainly isn't the most apt point of departure when discussing an album like this, Remmer's lyrics — repeated two- or three-word phrases (usually the song's title) delivered with adenoidal reserve — serve as perhaps the most illuminating illustration of just how phoned-in this record feels. Meanwhile "Droplets" and "Hideout," the pair of songs that do bear listening to for more than 30 seconds, reinforce just how formally stolid this album is: these tracks keep my interest simply because they feature hazier guitars and more intense hues, highlighting how enjoyment is purely a question of cosmetics here, as there are no lyrical, formal, or conceptual foci to persuade us to look beyond Hideout's surfaces.
1. I Woke Up
2. Much Better Than This
3. I'm Like You
4. Begin and End
5. Droplets
6. Five 6
7. I Forgot
8. Faster
9. Hideout