The Sea and Cake have at all times radiated an uncommon combination of ease and management. Their balmy chords and sighing vocals could also be redolent of lazy Mediterranean afternoons—Campari on ice, old-money sailboats—but their rhythms stay impeccably unwrinkled. In distinction, Sam Prekop’s solo digital work has at all times been playful, stressed, perhaps even a bit of bit reckless. Locked away in his house studio, the Chicago musician approaches his modular synthesizers like a genially rumpled Hollywood scientist, lab coat stained with surprisingly coloured chemical substances. Haywire arpeggios twitch and jerk; splotchy sounds undulate like cartoon amoebas. Infused with a guileless and inquisitive spirit, Prekop’s music is experimental in probably the most literal sense: What occurs after I push this button?
Sons Of is the primary duo file from Prekop and his longtime Sea and Cake bandmate John McEntire, a producer and percussionist who, between his time in Chicago teams like Tortoise and his work behind the boards for Stereolab and Teenage Fanclub, has put his stamp on a long time of indie and post-rock. However the venture is a very long time coming: A dozen years in the past, Prekop informed an interviewer that the 2 males had not too long ago been “very near collaborating on an ‘old school’ sequencer file”; then Prekop’s twins had been born, and his free time evaporated. The thought, although, didn’t. In 2019, they performed a handful of reveals collectively, recording as they went, and when the pandemic hit, they retreated to their respective studios and started emailing concepts backwards and forwards. Compiling the fruits of these long-distance collaborations with materials recorded stay in 2019 and 2021, Sons Of represents a pure extension of Prekop’s solo digital work, filled with baubly tones, chirping accents, and supersaturated colours.
However there are essential variations, too. The primary turns into obvious just a bit over a minute into the opening “A Ghost at Midday,” as a gargantuan kick drum comes pile-driving its method by way of elysian fields of synths. The rhythmic dimension of Prekop’s music has by no means been so outstanding: He started toying with drum machines on 2020’s Comma, however each monitor on Sons Of is anchored by the regular thump of fats, declarative kick drums and crisp digital hi-hats. Prekop has beforehand known as his beat programming “rudimentary,” and regardless of McEntire’s prowess as a drummer, the duo doesn’t appear a lot desirous about subtlety right here; the album’s beats are proudly, nearly defiantly simplistic. Pitched anyplace between a leisurely 118 bpm and a dubbed-out slow-motion crawl, the drums serve primarily an architectural perform, like trellises to help the expansion of their vine-like sequences. However that simplicity has a attraction of its personal: a mixture of insistence and innocence that’s paying homage to the very earliest home music.
