When you’ve spent any time just lately poking by means of streaming providers’ editorial playlists—significantly ones with the phrase “chill” within the title—you’re doubtless acquainted with the so-called Spotify sound. It’s reasonably paced, laden with jazzy main seventh chords, and clean because the rounded edges of a plastic telephone case. Although it’s the default instrumental palette for these taking care to not interrupt your late-night cram session, New York quintet Erica Eso have managed to make use of the sound’s unobtrusiveness to their benefit, crafting hushed alt-R&B that’s replete with avant-garde sleight of hand. 192 is their third and finest album up to now, lifting the synth-pop zeitgeist’s hood and tinkering with the engine beneath.
Led by composer Weston Minissali, who beforehand performed synthesizer in quirky prog outfit Cloud Turns into Your Hand, Erica Eso’s songwriting probes the gaps between Western 12-tone intervals. The band makes use of microtonal keyboards and fretless bass to conjure harmonies which might be acquainted however subtly askew. “Yolk,” 192’s second single, orbits a fractured drum-machine beat, assembling organ chords observe by observe. Even Minissali’s verses really feel fragmented, their stuttering syllables spilling from one line to the subsequent. “I’m lined in yolk, the tide’s comin’ in/I acquired so shut an animal screamed,” Minissali sings, contrasting visceral imagery towards the band’s ethereal textures.
“Y.L.M.E.” establishes an identical juxtaposition early on, depicting Erica Eso’s music as an escape from the sustained tragedy of life within the 2020s: “I paint a reasonably image after I’m at residence/Whereas my nation’s jaws recoil, spit blood and foam.” Minissali trades strains backwards and forwards with co-lead singer Angelica Bess, intertwined voices fading out and in of focus; a way of uncertainty grows throughout the band’s bubble of ambient synth. On “Opening Tumble,” the band’s tempo undulates beneath the track’s cozy chorus, shifting like a waterbed.
Getting into the file’s remaining stretch, the band reins in its glitchy rhythms to make a celebratory, krautrock-inspired dash to the end line. On “O Ocean,” Nathaniel Morgan and Rhonda Lowry lay down a traditional motorik groove, offering a clear canvas for the remainder of the band to splash with vaporous sound design. It’s the file’s steadiest tune, solely making two transient detours into pitched-down half time, nevertheless it’s an earned break from their extra cerebral songcraft—a possibility for Minissali and fellow keyboardist Lydia Velichkovski to unload their unused patches and riffs in a single cathartic burst.
Two-part coda “Acclaimed Evacuation” continues this foray into early-’70s prog rock, however Erica Eso adhere a bit too carefully to the grandiosity of their influences, sacrificing their unfastened, exploratory enchantment. The primary motion, a quasi-orchestral interlude, is uncharacteristically formal for the group. Blunting the artistic drive of “Pt. 2,” it’s nearly cinematic, peppered with pizzicato strings and fluttering tones that resemble telegraph messages.
