What is most immediately arresting about Lymbyc Systym is how warm the Brooklyn duo manages to feel, particularly on most recent effort Shutter Release. For a project that has made its name blurring the edges of electronic music with indie-oriented post-rock, “warm” is almost certainly not the first modifier that springs to most minds. Sweeping sonic vistas and grandiose crescendos abound, but LS manages to make them sound as if they come spooling out of the trees, or the very earth itself, rather than as cosmic radiation or the midnight revelations of a computer-aided consciousness. The electronic influence is subtle, which allows the music to breathe and swell under the obvious influence of humans working with something very specific in mind, not simply an agglomeration of neat ideas pasted together and given a title. The programming is so subtle and well used, sometimes it’s nearly indiscernible from the acoustic instrumentation if you’re not listening with an overly critical ear. But that’s easy to do with this album, which draws you in and makes its world the only one there is, at least for a scant 40 minutes.
This article appears in Jan 14-20, 2010.
