Floating Roots

The sense of space and stretched time that dub codified and then presented to the world has now become a common and continually reworked and evolving trope. Lena, aka Mathias Delplanque, creates a lovely album that presents his own spin in his sophomore effort, Floating Roots. Compared to the more astringent and sometimes crushingly dour takes on art-dub of recent years, Lena is much more fluid and downright warm — opening track "Wax Model," far from being lifeless, flows with easy grace, the shimmer of low textures providing a bed for the echoed beats and bass. From there, Floating Roots lives up to its title, taking the basics and almost setting them free in the air. Strictly instrumental songs like "Smoke Screen," with its sad siren '60s spy movie keyboard leads, and "Mountain Dub," which also reappears at the end in a mix from Daniel Mateo, are fine standouts. The majority of vocals are handled by one Tablloyd, though semi-cult figure Black Sifichi takes a low-key, growling turn on "Storm Blowin." Tablloyd's contributions are definitely an older kind of toasting, slow and considered rather than wired and quick, in keeping with the gentle unfolding of songs like "Under False Rulers," though he does step up a bit with the faster pace and flow of "Wah Gwan?," perhaps the most overtly "modern"-sounding track on the album. "Casquette of Sound," with its semi drum march start suddenly shifting into a combination of dreamy tones and Tablloyd's variant on a nursery rhyme, is possibly the highlight of his appearances.