Records of the Week

NORTHCAPE OFFICIAL SITE | SUN SEA SKY RECORDS

Asking for warm music in the summertime is like asking for ice water in an igloo, that is unless the tunes go down as smooth as Northcape’s do. The third record from the UK’s Alastair Brown is a collection of slow-motion sweat beads rolling down crests and ridges of human flesh. You don’t want to wipe them away because you’re just a little too lethargic, and in fact, the perspiration is so natural that you just want the body to congeal with the heat as it sees fit. This is what makes Captured From Static so notable – it throbs like a gooey melting marshmallow, almost suffocating you with its molten mix of blazing orange synths and billowing drum pads drenched in humidity, but it lulls and incapacitates with such efficacy that you stop caring that the breeze is minimal and the mercury is eternally rising. And it’s not just that every track does this either, because surely eventually you’d want a sliver of ice to offset the aural sunstroke; it’s that it does this with electronic beats and melodies that could easily transform by the time autumn leaves hit the ground later this year. Suddenly something that once sounded like an embrace of the sticky hot surroundings of summer could easily be heard as the crackling of sunset-colored vegetation rustling underneath footsteps, or a few months later, the frigid ponds slowly turning into snow-covered fields of ice. To resonate with various modes of nature through the electronic medium is not just a unique treat for the ears – Northcape proves that it can down right slow the pulse and let us take in the beauty around us, even if it’s by way of man-made melody machines.