No Age

According to Randy Randall (one half of Southern California art-punk duo No Age, along with Dean Spunt), the idea was to "construct" an album the same way one might build furniture or a building. The duo participated in every step of An Object's making: writing, recording, typesetting, manufacturing and packaging. The result, according to Randall, was "an object." Where No Age's third album, Everything in Between, built upon the waves of distorted noise characteristic of their early output by adding layers of sparkling guitars to their oeuvre, their fourth, An Object, strips it all back again. The duo adopted a minimalist palette and began recording ideas that became fodder for looping, twisting and otherwise being manipulated into other forms. The ethereal, slow-burning "Running From a Go-Go," for example, was actually created from gorgeous album centrepiece "An Impression," whose gentle, snapping heartbeat and woozy strings are utterly unrecognizable from the former's conveyor belt hums, scrapes and chirps. Elsewhere, the sparse chug of "Defector/ed" and the dirge-y mantra of "A Ceiling Dreams of a Floor" reflect the rough-hewn elegance of the duo's raw musical material.