Costa Music: Lighter Subjects

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.