Planningtorock – W

For the follow-up to 2006’s chamber-pop debut Have it All, Janine Rostron – aka Planningtorock – keeps the tracks tightly encased within a minimalist, spectral netherworld. One of the more challenging acts on James Murphy’s DFA label, the Berlin-based Boltonian creates unearthly atmospheres through the careful layering of repetitive, constrained orchestral flourishes, drum loops and heavily processed vocals.

W’s closest reference points are Fever Ray or the Knife (Planningtorock in fact collaborated with the latter on the opera Tomorrow, In a Year in 2010), but despite the shared aesthetic approach, Rostron’s songs have an intimacy entirely their own. Highpoints such as The Breaks have a strangely uncanny melodrama to them: while the emotional register belies a love of orthodox pop, the mode of expression imbues the songs with a haunting otherness. Such qualities demonstrate Rostron’s willingness to explore the borderlands between songcraft and technology, and make W a deeply imaginative and genuinely distinctive record. [Sam Wiseman]