Great

This is really an extremely mellow album, so much so that one might complain the songs sound very similar, however, if you really sit down and listen you will be pleasantly surprised. I recently saw these guys live and they sounded really good. Tarsier's voice is phenomenal, and I actually think she sounds far better live. I believe they sound like a mix of bjork, hooverphonic, and sneaker pimps. Both Alias and Tarsier are very nice and very humble, I really hope they pick up popularity. A definite download.

Alias Holds It Down

While you have to check Anticon here (it's on the label, for pete's sake), Alias does not and has never sounded like Anticon. Alias' instrumental hip-hop is extremely accessible, pleasant, hooky, soundtrack-type chillout techno. Tarsier's vocals and songwriting form a really beautiful complement to Alias' already significant talent. You, your girlfriend and your parents might all like this, and you will all hear something completely different in it. The single "Dr. C" is probably the best track, and "Luck and Fear" with Anticon figurehead Doseone is fantastic, but not at all representative of the record.

Bjork can only pray to sound this complete

Not sure about the above title, maybe its a lazy comparison but a true one in my opinion. After being a fan of anticon since the giga album I can say this is all you can expect, it doesnt quite sound like anything else although you're not sure why. It's alias at his most sublime, simply put, and well worth the dollar this site charges you, check it out just to have an album to put on after 13 & God to match its chill thanks again brendan Paul Thomas www.soundclick.com/luddite

It’s really hardly a surprise that Alias has delved completely into indie electronica/trip-hop. 2005′s Lillian, made with his brother Ehren, was practically one ambient soundscape, and Muted, the album that spawned the collaboration between himself and singer Tarsier, was all but void of its Anticon alternative hip-hop connotations. But perhaps that’s what Alias is trying to do, anyway: dispel connotations. Yes, he’s a hip-hop producer, and yes he’s a rapper, but he’s also interested in lush, layered atmospheric instrumentals, both organic and synthesized, that blend and contrast with one another like the colors on painter’s palette. And what he and Tarsier do on Brookland/Oaklyn is exactly that. There aren’t so much songs on the record as explorations of movement, thought, and mood. Keyboards come together with distorted guitars, muddy trip-hop beats meet violins. Tarsier’s voice, which often takes a kind of Björk-like haunt, fits smoothly with the tracks that Alias has laid down. It’s often clear and smooth, alluding to loneliness and regret, but Alias as producer doesn’t hesitate to distort and echo the vocals, putting the singer in the bottom of a well, at the end of a long telephone line, or deep under the earth in a large cave. The idea of space may be the most interesting part of Brookland/Oaklyn, because Alias & Tarsier never had any physical contact with one another during the entire recording process, relying instead on other means to send their work across the country, and this distance is reflected in the album itself. Yes, most electronic-based music does have a sort of sense of separation to it, but this is manifested even more strongly between Alias & Tarsier, as if with their respective voices they’re trying to bridge the expanse between them, even though they know they’ll probably never succeed. But maybe it’s the knowledge of the futility of their actions that also keeps the album from completely taking off. Tarsier hardly bothers to change her melodies much from track to track, and while Alias will hint at build-up (the dark, intense vocals he adds to “Last Nail” and “Luck and Fear,” the electric guitar that begs to do more in “5 Year Eve”), nothing ever really happens. Everything calms back down, returns to how it once was, quits without really trying to make itself realized. The album is so close to being fantastic, and knowing the potential that exists is what makes it so frustrating when Brookland/Oaklyn comes up short. – Marisa Brown