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Costa Music

Lighter Subjects

(Still; US: 1 Apr 2008; UK: 31 Mar 2008; Japan release date: 29 Oct 2007)

Joseph Costa picked the best way to get through the possible fizzling out of his L’Altra project. He has organized the production of Marc Hellner (Pulseprogramming), the mixing of Josh Eustis (Telefon Tel Aviv), the cello of Fred Lonberg-Holm (Flying Luttenbachers), and a taste of Aleksandra Tomaszweska’s burgeoning vocal talent into the form of his solo debut. Lighter Subjects is rich with melancholic introspection, gliding Joseph’s sweetly sorrowful voice over an organic mix of sharp electronic beats, twittering synthetics, and rich live instrumentation. It sounds exactly as you’d expect the names involved would produce, like Aoki Takamasa producing The Cure or M83. As a border crossing between ambient glitch and post-rock, the Costa Music premiere is generally quite nice. However, like most nice things, there ain’t much about any of the tracks truly stands out and makes any one more memorable than the next. The individual pieces are tasteful in and of themselves, but playing the album start to finish can be a little monotonous. It may be a little too serious for its title.

Rating:

Ranta is a music geek from East Vancouver. He spends most of his time researching, procuring, listening to, and writing about music. Since 2004, his work has appeared in such publications as Exclaim!, CBC Music, Tiny Mix Tapes, and PopMatters, and he has been a Polaris Music Prize juror since 2010. He graduated from SFU's Contemporary Arts program with a BFA in music in Summer 2011.


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