Glass Ghost

Like warm air meeting a cool, dry flow, this is the ghost of a perfect storm in a water glass. Eliot Krimsky and Mike Johnson are a duo from Brooklyn that combine bare bones beat production, tracing from RZA to Dilla, and the prismatic detail of downtown at twilight. Like a leaner and cleaner cLOUDEAD, the text of Idol Omen outlines a place where routine fails and turns surreal. Post-millennial tensions brim in "Mechanical Life" and "The Same," the latter marrying the paranoia to a jaunty quasi-conga rhythm. Krimsky's quiet falsetto shines out from "Like a Diamond," a skeletal track that could stand against over-medication. The sampled-Asian theme of "Violence" further knits the Wu-Tang strand, while "Ending" has a pleasant arm-in-arm curtain call feel to it, despite the "my molecules are changing/an aching heart is bleeding" exclamation. In the end, change is going to come, but now the times are transistorized.