Auburn Lull

Michigan’s Auburn Lull offer up a new "old disc” — an early works and rarities collection for their latest release. The songs on this 12-track outing are exactly what fans have come to look forward to from the heavily Brian Eno-inspired space-rock four-piece. The dreamy, drifting soundscapes are all here, as are the soft floating vocals and the strange, barely describable feeling of both melancholy and peacefulness that threatens to overcome the listener. Not all the songs on this release are as polished as the tracks on their more formal LPs, some feel more plodding, others murky, but there’s still a lot to appreciate, particularly if you don’t already own these songs on other discs. Regions Less Parallel includes the cuts from the 1997 EP The Duel Group, as well as offerings that have only appeared previously on compilations. Also woven into the fabric of Regions are three new, previously unreleased tracks ("Secor,” "Salvo,” and "Ti-99”). A fan of ambient dream pop can’t really go wrong with any Auburn Lull release, so consider this one a nice way to round out the missing songs in one’s collection. Regions Less Parallel tells the story of the group’s musical evolution through sound and composition alone (though the three new tracks have related liner notes); a journey that’s just as hypnotising as we’ve come to expect from the band’s collections of trance-inducing future sound.