Brooklyn's Slow Six make the kind of glacial, pretty music that tends to drive people three places: to ecstasy, to sleep, or to the composition of indistinct poetry. It's also the kind of music often saddled with near-useless terms like "ambient" (not the same as "has reverb, does not have drums") or "minimal" (not the same as "has violins, is repetitious, is not a symphony.") Most of the time, it's the opposite: Slow Six aren't indifferent, they're intentional; they're not minimalistic, they're just understated. And despite the self-imposed limitations-- I say that pejoratively-- of a lot of "neo-classical" or "post-rock" bands, Slow Six's two albums, the recently reissued Private Times in Public Places and 2007's Nor'easter, are actually different, which is more than you can say for plenty of their peers.
Though passages of Private Times move-- particularly the violin ricochets on "Evening Without Atonement" and some scattered lapses into soft, Reilly-like patterns-- it's a record focused on texture and atmosphere. Bandleader and composer Chris Tignor would be nothing without the chamber orchestra surrounding him, but it's the computerized glaze, the puffs and trails with which he ornaments the sounds, that makes the album what it is. And it works best when he manages to meld with the acoustic instruments-- when it's unclear whether a sigh is coming from a violin or the synth processing of it, or, like on the first section of "The Lines We Walked When We Walked Once Together", his synth patterns hop on Rhodes drones like a smooth stone on lake water.
Nor'easter, like the storm it's named after, is colder and more difficult than Private Times. It's not dark so much as it is colorless; strings aren't abrasive, but they feel caught out in something (everyone knows storms are brutal; fewer acknowledge their loneliness). It's also an album that doesn't feel quite as genre-nebulous and noncommittal as Private Times, trading in that album's sometimes-damning lack of inertia for more straightforwardly concert-hall-style composition, more dissonance, and more movement. It's telling that Nor'easter came out on legendary West Coast classical label New Albion, while the Private Times reissue was released by Western Vinyl-- one's clearly a classical record, one's clearly an indie record with a few classical leanings.
Which is why it's hard to come down hard on saying one's better than another. Private Times isn't without its share of wonderful moments, and "The Lines..." actually makes a case for half-hour-long tracks, but it's almost damned by how safe it is. Nor'easter is a less appealing listen, in a lot of ways, and certainly won't strike a chord with listeners fond of creamy, compulsively beautiful "indie composers" like, say, Max Richter. But it also sounds a little more distinctive than Private Times, which, in a genre that provokes some desperately vague music, is worth a nod-- maybe even a floral lyric or two.
