White Hinterland - Kairos

Lesser bands must hate White Hinterland. Armed with gorgeous swells of jazzy-electronica, Casey Dienel and Shaun Creeden make the complicated sound ridiculously easy. Fluttering out like a cool morning breeze, the Portland-based duo’s sophomore LP is an irresistible 40 minutes of deceivingly minimal textures and rhythms. Much of the tranquillity comes from Dienel, whose glorious intone is an unavoidable focus. Wandering blissfully above the thumps of Icarus and, album stand out, Cataract, her gentile mew is as enchanting as an aural hypnosis session. To shrug this aside as another female voice-driven waltz does no justice to the musical finesse on offer. By knotting together reams of organic samples with spacious beats, tracks like Huron form an entangled, yet strangely delicate, mesh that does the groundwork for Dienel to take flight. Both pure and oh so simple, the only difficult thing about this record is removing it from your stereo. [Billy Hamilton]