Laurel Halo, Behind the Green Door
Featured Album
A straightforwardly beat-driven release
Electronic album artists often use EPs to sluice out small batches of tightly-knit tracks that might or might not indicate a future direction. Let’s hope that in the case of Laurel Halo’s Behind the Green Door EP, it does — it’s a more straightforwardly beat-driven release than 2012′s Quarantine, something she’s quite good at. Of course, she still bends the framework into all kinds of aural shapes: The stalactite-like keyboards of “Throw,” the opening track, evokes mid-’90s Aphex Twin or µ-Ziq, while “UHFFO” is a phased-dizzy minimalist techno, everything from the beat to the zapping keyboard duel that livens it up midway in, coated with gauze. The heavily dubbed-out “Sex Mission,” meanwhile, contains zero heavy breathing, unless you count the way the rhythm track heaves — not in a cartoon-porn way, but something more meditative while still evoking arousal.
