Conquering Animal Sound – On Floating Bodies

Entropy and hydrostatics aren’t your average lyrical fodder, but Conquering Animal Sound (aka Anneke Kampman and James Scott) aren’t your average musicians. Their breadth of inspiration – not only scientific and intellectual, but in terms of musical tone and texture – is truly impressive, their sound a glittering, brittle synthesis of agitated machine music and celestial lullabies.

The duo’s second album recalls many of the same touchstones as debut Kammerspeil (Warn Me’s thematic echoes of Hyperballad, for instance, reinstate the Bjork comparisons), but the results feel more assertively individual than before, cultivating a distinctive atmosphere at once warm and disquieting.

From the ominous aura of Ultimate Heat Death of the Universe (as boldly impressive as its end-of-existence title would indicate) to the dark magic of Treehouse, the restrained pulse of A Noise Remains to the future-R&B of tracks like No Dream, On Floating Bodies proves an intoxicatingly unorthodox pop record bursting with ambition. [Chris Buckle]