At last, after a handful of e.p’s on Neo Ouija, English Muffin, De:Bug and Pitchcadet, Bauri’s debut album is here. Slacker Journal is music for contemplation: beautiful mood music that is subtle, melancholy, en-trancing and hypnotic. Like much of Neo Ouija’s recent output, the complexity, intricacy and construction of each piece is staggering. Bauri’s music evolves at a languid, mesmerizing pace, with amazing attention to detail. Martin has a natural touch when it comes to building a track up, layer upon layer, before allowing it to dissolve again.
Slacker Journal like Bauri’s numerous e.p’s, is oddly esoterik yet surprisingly addictive. The 8 tracks on – 9 on the CD which included “Vintetar” which previously appeared on the faultless Lakonia ep, also on Neo Ouija – are, despite their length, all over far too quickly. The album features classic Bauri styled pieces like “Twinkle Stars” with it’s smooth, rather eerie Vangelis-esque pads (think the introduction to “Blade Runner”) showered in glittering effects, or the aquatic, uneasy “Kolikok” which drones, bubbles, flutters and bursts over an alien heartbeat. Then there are the more brooding tracks like “Knusfilur”, suffused with warm droning melodies and clunking percussion over which a lustrous wind-chimed melody unravels, or the exquisite “Snowflake” which whistles, stutters and chatters over a relentless looped bassline.
The album’s remarkable cohesiveness really demands that the whole album be listened to in one sitting. What’s often noticeable about many albums is that they simply end after x number of tracks. Slacker Journal, however, concludes thanks to the expertly created title track which works wonderfully when listened to in context, i.e. after the rest of the album has been heard.
Again the ingenious, multi-layered build-up and deconstruction of this track further help to draw the album to a suitably evocative close. There’s as much happening distantly in the background as there is more prominently, the high pitched whines and drones contributing further to the already multilayered melody packed together tightly with some quite extraordinarily detailed percussion that crunches, fizzes and crackles. These all build hypnotically before being fading into the distance to be replaced by, presumably, Martin Abrahammsons glitched, echoing voice repeating over and over again – “I write what I want. What I want is this. This is what I want. The Slacker Journal“.
Slacker Journal is very much a quiet, subtle and understated album that consolidates and builds on all the elements that made e.p.’s like Lakonia and Morning Dew so successful. Perfection.
