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Nest – “The Twelve”
Retold

Nest’s self-titled album was the last thing I wrote about on my old music blog. At the time, the label (Serein) was all-free and all-digital, which has since changed, though I’d like to think the experiment was a success. At any rate, this new album from Nest is a rerecording of the old EP, plus several new tracks, and is well worth a purchase. The calm, cinematic beauty of almost every track is refreshing, and “The Twelve” is a perfect representation of the way Nest allows the arrangements to breathe. The closest comparator I can come up with is Chopin crossed with Labradford.

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Spoon – “I Summon You (Cool)”
Get Nice!

This alternate version of the Gimme Fiction track has a fun one-off feel, as if it were a remix by the Notwist or something. I think the little electronic warbling is a nice counter to Britt Daniel’s rough vocals. It’s only a minute and a half long, rather short of the four minutes of the album version, but I like it that way.

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So – “Track 2”
So

The So project, a collaboration between Japanese songstress Eri and the enigmatic noise/electronic pioneer Markus Popp (Oval), is a strange, beautiful, and unpredictable affair. Eri’s warblings are layered and distorted so as to be nearly unrecognizable, but Popp still crafts them into coherent songs… when he feels like it. Track 2 is the strongest, I think, but 1 and 4 are also nice, and although the overall texture remains steady, there is a lot of variety on the record and it’s well worth exploring for any fan of electronic music. (insound)