In "Avatar", the twenty-first episode of the third season of "The X-Files", actress Janie Woods-Morris portrays a madam named Lorraine Kelleher, who is questioned by Agents Mulder and Scully after the death of one of her prostitutes. (She meets her demise later in the episode.) Within "The X-Files" universe, spanning more than two-hundred episodes and nine seasons, Lorraine Kelleher is a minor part, to say the least. But producer Kai Hugo nonetheless chose the name for a track on his second full-length release under the Palmbomen alias. The track, with its canned claps, faux woodblock clops, acid lines and laser pips slowed by cough syrup, is a strange and woozy standout on an odd yet amiable effort.
As Ganz Nackisch, Hugo favored the dusty-stylus distortion and filtered-house thump that was already out of fashion in France in the late '00s. By the time of his 2010 EP Moon Children, he had shifted gears, favoring the slo-mo arpeggios, 2am-hour synth washes and reverbed vocals popularized by the Drive soundtrack. "Stock"—off his 2013 album *Night Flight Europa—*embraced the sounds of the continent, from Italo to taser-riddled electro but not much of it stuck. While past productions dabbled in vocals, Palmbomen II does away with them entirely and the album is decidedly more insular and the better for it, sounding like Hugo recorded it all while locked in his bedroom.
If he did so it seems likely he was simultaneously watching every last DVD of "The X-Files": Each track on Palmbomen II derives its name from a character on the show, and Hugo's choices, like "Lorraine Kelleher", reflect an obsession and peculiarly deep knowledge of every sub-minor and one-off character. There’s no "Knowle Rohrer" or "Marita Covarrubias" to be found here, much less "Toothpick Man" or "Luis Cardinal", so even adepts of the show might not glean the connection. Instead, Hugo has a track named for the systems analyst situated near a volcano on Mount Avalon who had a silicone-like tentacle burst through his throat in one early episode ("Peter Tanaka") as well as a Boards of Canada-esque one-minute interlude named for Mulder’s mother, "Teena Mulder".
Taken in one setting, the album could use a bit more movement, BPM-wise, its pacing somewhere between drugged and extremely hungover. "Gerd Thomas" feels lethargic, the sluggishness of the 303 and handclaps offset by a sprinkling of marimba. The interlude "Caitlin Ross" sounds like it could be from a Ryuichi Sakamoto demo and "Rebecca Waite" rides percolating tropical hand drums, distorted thumb piano and a rattle that makes for one of the album’s brighter moments. Tape hiss infuses every number, giving the album a sense of nostalgia, right down to the garbled tape outro of "Leo Danzinger". But Hugo seems to be invoking the '90s not as a vague point of reference, but as a very specific point on a timeline. I’d peg it to 1992-1993, right when Aphex Twin’s own homemade acid compilation Selected Ambient Works 85-92 cuts off and when Chris Carter’s "The X-Files" first goes on the air.
