This is the debut release from the duo of Brian Foote (Kranky/Peak Oil/False Aralia) and Paul Dickow (Strategy), but the two artists have been collaborating off and on for roughly a quarter century now. Notably, however, there is absolutely no stylistic carryover from the duo’s previous projects together (Nudge and Fontanelle), as High Cube is the musical equivalent of an ‘80s Trapper Keeper featuring a bitchin’ camaro, palm trees, and the word “California” in bright pink neon letters. I suppose the same could be said of any number of forgettable vaporwave artists, but Foote and Dickow also bring serious production chops and some more eclectic influences to their bleary and simmering post-modern dance party as well. My best attempt at describing their shared vision is “it sounds like contemporary dubplates of ‘80s Japanese ‘city pop’ infected with subtle strains of early techno and hip-hop,” but the vibe is what truly matters here and High Cube beautifully evokes nothing less than an imagined and hypnagogic late-night drive through ‘80s Los Angeles with the top down and the breeze in my hair.
The hazy, neon-soaked, and vaguely retro-futurist world of High Cube was apparently a deliberately chosen “narrative mood,” which is quite an unusual wavelength for two artists to share, but I have no idea how often Foote and Dickow improvised together before they ultimately found this direction. I bring that up because the duo specifically note that the album’s direction was not defined by their gear choices. Despite that claim, however, the pair’s gear and working methods did loom large in this album’s conception in other ways, as they worked with strict, self-imposed constraints: “five machines, a one-hour timer, and a total ban on overthinking.” While Foote and Dickow do note that High Cube takes a “drier, sparser, and decidedly chunkier” approach than their previous work as a result of those decisions, the most significant impact from their newly constrained working method was that it forced them out of familiar patterns and allowed something new to organically grow as “an accident of chemistry.”
The opening “Volcano Snail” is the piece that best captures Foote and Dickow at the height of their powers, which makes sense given that it was also the album’s first single. To my ears, it is a bit more austere and ambient dub-inspired than High Cube’s other pieces, but it is otherwise quite a solid representation of the various threads that run throughout the entire album. For example, the music is about as hyper-minimal as it gets, as the piece is essentially just a gently percolating vamp with a head-bobbing groove, bleary synth pads, and some subtle effects. The execution is everything, however, as “Volcano Snail” coheres into an absolutely killer groove once the bubbling bass line hits and its sublimely understated pleasures only multiply further with the aid of headphones or a suitably banging sound system (subtly panning percussion, psychotropic laser squiggles, spacy flanging, etc.). While there are no real hooks or any overt build up to a compositional crescendo or cool transformation, there is definitely a sustained and immersive mood and the details lurking within that mood are compellingly vivid, unpredictable, and endlessly evolving.
For me, the album’s other big highlights are “Ofid+wor” and “Mother of Thousands.” In the former, a wonderfully trebly, off-kilter, and breakin’-friendly drum machine groove winds through a tripped-out fantasia of urbane, jazzy sophistication mingled with weird gurgles and trills that evoke a hallucinatory jungle. Elsewhere, in “Mother of Thousands,” warm ambient pads and subtly streaking “falling star” effects are anchored by a seismically deep bass line and a characteristically wonky and unstable beat. The real beauty of the piece lies in how the beat is spatially active and deconstructed, however, as the way the shivering cymbal patterns flicker and flutter around my head is impressively hypnotic.
In fact, the beats are truly the heart and soul of High Cube as far as I am concerned, as they are invariably weird, off-kilter, visceral, and inventively processed in gently hallucinatory ways. These beats feel like they are fucking alive, as they endlessly shiver, lurch, stumble, skitter, and stammer rather than simply falling rigidly into a predictable pattern. The music was admittedly a bit more of an acquired taste for me, but I believe that I have now mostly acquired it. While there are not any strong melodic hooks to be found and I usually have a deep aversion to hazed-out, impressionistic, and vaporwave-esque strains of ‘80s electro-funk and jazz-pop, Foote and Dickow have elevated those vibes into an elegantly smeared and curdled retro-mindfuck that provides the perfect state of disorienting unreality for their mesmerizing and endlessly mutating percussion workouts to work their full magic.
