No longer a solo alias for multi-instrumentalist and producer Jakob Skott, Syntaks officially transforms into a duo on Ylajali. The album features the wordless, largely textural voice of new member Anna Cecilia, who appeared as a guest on 2006′s Awakes. Inspired by Knut Hamsun’s 1890 novel Hunger, and recorded a short distance from the location where the book was written, Ylajali — named after the mysterious woman who eludes the protagonist, a shriveling drifter — nonetheless seems more affected by its sonic touchstones: lush dream pop, wistful IDM. It’s a remarkable progression from the inert clunkiness that prevented Awakes from rivaling the best of its new school of ambient dream pop class (Manual’s Ascend, Ulrich Schnauss’ A Strangely Isolated Place). Even when it most resembles a Morr Music tribute to Harold Budd and the Cocteau Twins’ The Moon and the Melodies, it is doubtlessly capable of rousing the most lapsed of shoegazers. – Andy Kellman
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