Mountains first emerged as a collaboration between Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp, co-founders of the Brooklyn-based Apestaartje label. Originally, the duo approached Mountains as a means to articulate, within a live context, their blend of acoustic and electronic instrumentation into fully formed soundscapes. Soon, however, these methods began to translate into recorded material as well. Choral, Mountain’s third studio album and first for Thrill Jockey, was recorded largely in real-time and further exemplifies the band’s ability to produce dynamic layers of sound. While occasionally coming across as crisp and polished, the music maintains a more immediate quality, allowing expressive qualities to flourish. The end result is a consistently rewarding album, whose layered textures and pleasant atmospheres are complemented by moments of sheer blissfulness.
Choral’s six tracks possess distinct qualities, each focusing on a separate array of instrumentation and structure. Despite these variations, the album avoids sounding fragmented, as each song effectively melds into a cohesive whole. Clocking in at nearly 13 minutes, the album begins with the sprawling title track. With its crisp drone and bubbling, playful synths, the song’s first half unfurls and rises with anticipation. Around the halfway point, the song begins to take hold as ethereal electronics, lush field recordings, and a slowly pulsating bass tone culminate and ascend before drifting off and leaving a solitary acoustic guitar in their wake. Now that the listener is sufficiently blissed-out, the album glides along seamlessly, traversing various moods and textures.
"Map Table," another highlight, begins with a delicate acoustic guitar pattern, which is reminiscent of a Fennesz melody minus the digital stabbings and electronic manipulations. As it draws to a close, the song transforms into perhaps the most beautiful moment on the album: a mournful electric piano plays a descending melody as it is wrapped in muffled field recordings and cloudy electronic textures. Elsewhere, "Melodica," with its peaceful harmonica tones and shimmering electronics, evokes Gas circa 2000’s Pop, while "Telescope"'s acoustic guitar is front and center with its Beirut-esque strumming patterns and chord progressions, until it is slowly overtaken by an encompassing rainstorm. Overall, Choral reveals few, if any, missteps and allows the elements of each song to breathe and expand.
With Choral, Mountains utilize and integrate conventions firmly established within the realms of psychedelic, electronic, and ambient music, so the album will inevitably yield comparisons to the output of labels such as Kranky and Touch, or ambient pioneers like Brian Eno and Popol Vuh. However, Choral, never succumbing to mere regurgitation, represents talented musicians confident in their methods, who channel their influences to produce a sound that proves accessible while remaining distinctive and utterly expressive.
1. Choral
2. Map Table
3. Telescope
4. Add Infinity
5. Melodica
6. Sheets Two