Porcelain Raft, Strange Weekend
Featured Album
Lovingly constructed, basement-recorded jams
Maybe it’s a coincidence, but the track titles on Strange Weekend, the full-length debut from laptop scientist Mauro Remiddi, are fairly apt descriptions of the music itself (see: “Drifting In And Out,” “Shapeless & Gone,” “Put Me To Sleep”). With their underwater acoustics, synths sparkling in oceans of reverb, and Remiddi’s high, ethereal chirp, these lovingly constructed, basement-recorded jams float by in a gorgeous haze – like a brilliant dream you barely remember, a soft drug trip you didn’t realize you were having. But for all its spacey minimalist texture, this isn’t remotely close to chillwave: There’s too much concrete pain and sweat in Remiddi’s voice, too much clarity in the arrangements, which (even at their most ambient) put melody over mosaics. Check “Is This Too Deep For You?,” a standout nugget positioned somewhere between early M83 and Animal Collective at their poppiest, or the fragile “Backwords,” which sounds like a Roger Waters ballad lost in hypnotic space.
