Skimskitta

Chantal Passamonte's sophomore album for Warp follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, One on One, in its collision of the awkward with the beautiful. Despite living in the English countryside and having conjured up many of the sounds on the album from naturally found materials, the sonic vision of her alter ego is more dilapidated cityscape than untouched wilderness, with a density forged from the constant push and pull of opposing elements — the taps and scrapes of splintered percussion never quite amounting to a recognizable beat before they collapse under the weight of subtle tones and an occasional swell of melody. Like labelmates Aphex Twin and Autechre, this all amounts to something of a tough listen, though it is tracks like "Sixnot6" and "Distracted2" that really reward the listener willing to wade through the bleak atmospherics. The human interference that defines these two tracks has the effect of a brittle emotive film holding the rest of the album together as a tangible whole, emerging from the clangs and clatters with a minute or so of silk-spun synthetic orchestration like a shaft of sun through an overcast sky.