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Emeralds

Does It Look Like I’m Here?

(Editions Mego; US: 10 Jun 2010; UK: 24 May 2010)

One of the many known pleasures of Oneohtrix Point Never’s 2009 double disc opus Rifts was the conciseness of its labyrinthine edifices. Emeralds, sonically related brethren who likewise hail from the post-noise diaspora (an exodus into drone, psychedelia, and hypnagogic—all of which apply here), have nabbed the mastering guy from Rifts, experimental guitarist James Plotkin, and constructed an album every bit as densely variegated and tremblingly beautiful as the former album.  Does it Look Like I’m Here? is a crystal-clean top-notch piece of kosmische shimmer spliced with post-rock whimsy and mostly allocated in pop-length plots. After an incipient period flooded with limited run tapes and CD-Rs, Emeralds have brought their abstract ideas into focus. The achingly beautiful “Candy Shoppe” sets the stage.  The listener is captured in the cut’s synth algebra, inert in it, while the tingly sensation of its blissful atmospheric chords massage the eardrum and brain behind it alike. In the world of Does It Look Like I’m Here?, the brain is only a vessel, a prosthetic for the body’s experience of the heavenly melodies. Throughout, Emeralds proceeds from the cinematic wash and still of the Brock Van Wey-ish “Goes By” to the title tracks, which builds from a the tension of a goblin-hacking Nintendo arpeggio to a mounting intensity not unlike Fuck Buttons’s “Space Mountain” without the drum circles. Yes, Emeralds, it looks like you’re here. It seems you have arrived.

Rating:

Timothy Gabriele is a writer who studied English and Film at the University of Massachussetts at Amherst. He currently lives in the New Haven, CT region with his wife, his daughter, his dog, and two cats. He has been featured in the book Goodbye Billie Jean: The Meaning of Michael Jackson. His column, The Difference Engine, appears regularly at PopMatters. Among his many current projects is a biographical blog series chronicling his life via mix tapes, which can be read at Documentary Mixtape.


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