Album Review: Warmth by Blondes

Proudly nocturnal in spirit, Warmth is a firm collection of ten heavily rhythmic workouts in which the duo also embrace slow builders such as opener "OP Actual", where understated metallic sounding melodies blur themselves within a bed of progressively minded, ever shifting grooves. Their first album since 2013s Fisher sees the pair make a move towards sculpting tunes often centered around a strong percussive framework such as "Clipse", a delicately pieced together work where circular melodies flit between rhythmical gaps. Things start to take a direct path towards hypnotic techno on "Quality of Life" where steadily pulsating 4/4 beats form a trance-inducing rhythmic bedrock for atmospheric synth lines to flow over.

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Blondes seem in constant discovery of their music's dance floor potential. The New York-based duo of Sam Haar and Zach Steinman, two art school grads without much club exposure, were at first interested in the effects of repetition. Even while using hardware instead of live instruments, Blondes seemed more like a band than a dance music act. But records for Rvng Intl.

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On Swisher, the captivating 2013 LP from Blondes, the Brooklyn duo managed to capture the tactile sentiment of their fabled live performances on wax. On Warmth, their aptly titled third release, Blondes repeat the feel of their last record, for better and for worse.   Kicking off with the slow build and scrambled oscillations of "OP Actual," Warmth segues into a loose and bright pair of motoric beat-keepers, "Clipse" and "Quality of Life," giving Blondes their most well-sequenced and digestible thread of songs to date. But as they get ….

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I've written quite a bit about Blondes in the past, both here and elsewhere. Usually one of my favourite dance acts, mainly due to their trippy, psychedelic wig-outs, they always seemed to be one of the more interesting outfits in techno, but on Warmth, they've (for the first time in a long time ….

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