{"id":19583,"date":"2020-10-24T05:30:35","date_gmt":"2020-10-24T09:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=19583"},"modified":"2020-09-23T13:22:27","modified_gmt":"2020-09-23T17:22:27","slug":"album-review-halou-albatross-deluxe-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2020\/10\/24\/album-review-halou-albatross-deluxe-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Halou \u2013 Albatross (Deluxe Edition)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"For a time in the 1990s, trip hop was a musical sensation. In some ways an outgrowth of the brief lounge\/exotica craze, trip hop (also known as chillwave) owed at least as much to the Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave) movement of the \u201880s. But as its name suggests, trip-hop folded in a hip-hop sensibility (with its inventive use of loops and samples) and an emphasis on melody and atmosphere. Primarliy a British phenomenon, the style featured leading artists including Massive Attack, Portishead, Sneaker Pimps, Tricky and Zero 7, but even as grunge rock was the prevailing trend here, the genre found some success in the United States as well. Even when its time in the spotlight passed, trip hop would exert an influence on much of the popular music to follow.<\/p>\n

Though they\u2019re on record as rejecting the trip hop label, San Francisco duo Halou has long been considered one of the prime exponents of the style, and certainly among the most prominent in the United States. After playing ambient and shoegaze music together in Anomie, Rebecca and Ryan Coseboom launched electronica\/dream pop-styled Halou in the mid \u201890s. Alongside occasional outside projects, the couple would release four albums and four EPs under the Halou name between 1998 and 2008. After an extended hiatus, Halou returned in 2019 with a fifth album, Brutalism for Lovers<\/i>.<\/p>\n

With more than 3 million Spotify plays, Halou\u2019s most well-known track is \u201cHoneythief,\u201d from their 2006 EP Separation<\/i>. That same year, the band released another EP, Albatross<\/i>. That five-track collection exemplified Halou\u2019s approach, one that combines the electronic textures, lush arrangements and Rebecca Coseboom\u2019s haunting vocals. While later efforts would more prominently incorporate guitar into the swirling, heady mix, Albatross<\/i> is primarily an exercise in electronics (plus voice).<\/p>\n

At less than 20 minutes, the original Albatross<\/i> EP left fans wanting more in a similar vein. And in July 2020, Halou released Albatross (Deluxe Edition)<\/i>, more than doubling the original set\u2019s length and adding six additional tracks. Highlights include the brief \u201cCello,\u201d a stately, melancholy piece that sets the tone for the music to come. Rebecca Coseboom\u2019s warm, expressive voice is at the heart of all the tracks on Albatross<\/i>; her supple voice easily climbs to the upper range, swoops down to lower notes, and does it all while conveying the emotional content of the music.<\/p>\n

But equal to the vocals, the gauzy-yet-somehow-sharp texture of Halou\u2019s instrumental work helps define the extended EP. Minimalist works like \u201cOne Sunny Day\u201d suggest Philip Glass, but Halou\u2019s wonderfully expressive music imparts a less studied, more passionate perspective.<\/p>\n

Newly-heard Albatross<\/i> tracks like \u201cFar Too Far\u201d sometimes submerge the beat to near inaudible depths, and \u201cExoskeleton\u201d employs Rebecca Coseboom\u2019s voice more as a textural element than a vehicle to deliver lyrics. There\u2019s an underlying sense of decadence and dread \u2013 not unlike Sweden\u2019s A Camp \u2013 on cuts like \u201cYour Halls\u201d and the hypnotic \u201cWe Don\u2019t Love You Anymore.\u201d And though it\u2019s Albatross<\/i>\u2019 sole concession to the dance aesthetic, \u201cEverything is OK (Different)\u201d still somehow works in the context of the set\u2019s overall laid-back vibe.<\/p>\n

A decade without an album release doesn\u2019t seem to have altered Halou\u2019s fundamental musical aesthetic; Brutalism for Lovers<\/i> is very much a piece of the creatively successful path the band pursued on its earlier work. Any listener who appreciates the new album\u2019s sonic values will find a similarly effective music on the expanded reissue of Halou\u2019s third EP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a time in the 1990s, trip hop was a musical sensation. In some ways an outgrowth of the brief lounge\/exotica craze, trip hop (also known as chillwave) owed at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19584,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,64,65,72],"tags":[4311],"class_list":["post-19583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-electronica","category-reissue","category-review","category-trip-hop","tag-halou","cat-26-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","cat-72-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19585,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19583\/revisions\/19585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}