Fidgital: Departure

Canada may not have a very prolific downtempo scene, but as the work of Delerium attests, the odd gem rises out of the Northern country’s swarms of smarmy indie bands. The fourth studio album from Vancouver’s Fidgital is such a prize. Centering on the duo of former Front And Center vocalist Ryan Slemko and producer Keith Gillard, their latest full-length tones down the sickly sweet live nu-jazz of their early career for a slow dive into meditative, ambient, organic electronica, like a Canuck update of Enigma. “We Lost The Signal” takes a page out of the Massive Attack dub playbook, with a Toshinori Kondo style trumpet, cascading Native Instruments presents, and their standard of live drumming, which pushes the bulk of the album to the next level. A couple songs seem to rely on a sound or two a little too much, but the record flows so beautifully as a whole (especially in headphones) that the majority of such foibles and minor undoings melt away. Departure is the reassuring presence of a higher power condensed to CD form. Feel it.