Roman Flügel opens his newest album, All The Right Noises, with a track that uncannily grasps at the intimacy of Owen Pallett and Will Butler's score to Spike Jonze's Her. Tonality and instrumentation aside, the overture of All The Right Noises is subtle, reserved and warm. In a way that is unusual for the artist's conventional category, Flügel calmly coaxes the listener into a mellow state of mind for the remainder of the record. The album entirely oscillates between IDM and techno tropes while eschewing any one sound.
Aptly titled "Fantasy," the opening track plays like a daydream, or an early rise only a few hours after dawn. At "Dead Idols," it seems as though Flügel is trying to distance himself from perceptible dance floor conventions, and align himself more closely with ambient sensibilities; broken beats and clamorous synths symphonically comprise the backdrop, but nothing aggressive ever comes to the forefront.
The album is tailor-made for the metropolitan commuter, with the stop-and-go of a transit system evoked by the occasional, tense peaks of the album, in high contrast with its meditative lulls. It's slippery — particularly the placement of "Life Tends to Come and Go" in its track list — and douses the listener with a melancholy that is too contemplative for the dance floor, where we might otherwise encounter Flügel.
(Dial)Aptly titled "Fantasy," the opening track plays like a daydream, or an early rise only a few hours after dawn. At "Dead Idols," it seems as though Flügel is trying to distance himself from perceptible dance floor conventions, and align himself more closely with ambient sensibilities; broken beats and clamorous synths symphonically comprise the backdrop, but nothing aggressive ever comes to the forefront.
The album is tailor-made for the metropolitan commuter, with the stop-and-go of a transit system evoked by the occasional, tense peaks of the album, in high contrast with its meditative lulls. It's slippery — particularly the placement of "Life Tends to Come and Go" in its track list — and douses the listener with a melancholy that is too contemplative for the dance floor, where we might otherwise encounter Flügel.
