Seams – Tourist / Sleeper

Split into two musical 'journeys,' Seams latest mini-album, comprising new material (Sleeper) and a well-deserved re-up of last year's Tourist EP, is an elegantly restrained take on minimal house and experimental electronica. Championed by the likes of James Holden and Portishead, Seams' music is emotional, precise and elegantly structured.

The sense of space on tracks like Hung Markets and the syncopated glockenspiel loops of Nachtmusik are designed to absorb and enfold – Seams' use of ambient washes and field recordings lend an organic but supernatural, ghostly feel to the downbeat electronics that are the skeletal structure of the tracks.

The Sleeper starts out melancholy, almost claustrophobic; vocal samples are used as rhythmic flourishes on The Glow and Potential, but Seams avoids the post-Burial cliché of timestretched R&B hooks in favour of distorted, echoing syllables and moans. Punch is the highlight, as Seams moves the tempo up into stuttering 2-step, with rising, arpeggiated synths and looped vocal samples, evoking the likes of Martyn and 2562.