LA Timpa

*300 copies limited edition* LA Timpa snagged our attention with his exceptional debut ‘Equal Amounts Afraid’ for O___o?,and an acclaimed follow-up for Rabit’s Halcyon Veil, which eventually led to a guest spot on SpaceAfrika’s cult lightning rod ‘Honest Labour’ and a remix for Tricky. After letting the dust settle, hereturns with a new collection of songs mired in rawly sublime melancholy, turning existentialreflections into a richly evocative sort of chamber pop akin to Arthur Russell jamming with A.R.Kane. It drifts heavy-lidded between fully formed songs obfuscated by a dense fug to properlybezzonked lo-fi improv that follows his nose for detuned strings smudged and activated with fieldrecordings. It’s all done in the loosest, most hypnagogic style, characterising how the spirits of‘80s no wave NYC and even ‘90s Kiwi indie rock have sluiced into the truly singular milieu of SouthLondon in the 2020s. 

 

Sung in a fragile yet shatterproof falsetto to backdrops of smeared loops and lines of coruscatingguitar and keys, ‘Pity By One All Good Treasure’ conveys itself by seduction and suggestion ratherthan any heavy handed or literal techniques. Whether by design or implication, its rhythmelodicmake-up recalls how West African music surfaces in the lilt of Lifetones, or even how Jim Reeves’country music unexpectedly percolates thru Nigerian styles, all obviously at a remove of decades,but nonetheless short-circuiting expectations and putative timelines in the process

 

The record wails into view with ‘Wide’, a properly bewildering opening of tangled flutes thatsounds like Debit’s pre-historic wind instrument investigations as if treated by Alvin Lucier, before taking flight on a screwy trajectory that seems to reference a great deal of music we love;from labelmate Dawuna to Coby Sey’s pop inversions to Dean Blunt’s enigmatic world-building,from Tricky’s low-lit pre-millennial tension to Mica Levi’s unsteady phased strings - it all soundsimmaculately produced and entirely unresolved.