Bruno Pronsato is getting more ambitious. Despite cementing his reputation in 2008 with Why Can't We Be Like Us, one of the late decade's finest documents of minimal techno, Pronsato has spent the proceeding years taking risks. He made his debut on DFA as half of NDF with the entrancing "Since We Last Met". Most impressive was 2009's The Make Up the Break Up, a 38-minute, Nico-sampling single/EP/album that spun off into salty psychedelia. Not content to develop his ideas over the course of compartmentalized, 10-minute tracks, Pronsato's work has grown larger in scope. This growth culminates in his third LP, Lovers Do, a striking and massive statement that inverts the collaborative nature of much of house music in favor of a more self-contained approach.
Simply put, Lovers Do aligns Pronsato with artists like Terre Thaemlitz and Theo Parrish, artists who abstract house music into large, emotionally charged canvases. Pronsato isn't quite as Art-focused as those two-- from its title on down, the politics of Lovers Do is personal-- but he does juggle house music's tropes to create a vast, rich world. He seems to ignore the genre's most confident ingredients (heavy four-to-the-floor beats, jacked-up sloganeering) and focus on the insular: snatches of jazz, mournful Rhodes keyboards, dubby rhythmic patter. He employs no divas, just a cast of mumbling insomniacs. On the album's second track, over a surprising amount of marimba, you are reminded repeatedly: "Anybody else/ Anybody but... you." There are moments-- as during the amorphous, copper-mouthed "Trio-Out"-- that Lovers Do seems to have more in common with, say, Brooklyn beat-manglers Excepter than Berlin techno.
Impressively, Lovers Do manages to be tonally dark without being foreboding or sinister. "Noir" probably applies, but not just the rainy vistas and shadowy alleys that term normally conjures. Think also of waking up in strange rooms, or characters floating in and out of focus. You could certainly stare out at the skyline with Lovers Do as your soundtrack, but its darkness is born out of moments of isolation and doubt we all experience. This happens because Pronsato takes great care not to suffocate listeners. Lovers Do is long-- too long, quite frankly-- but it offers plenty of outs. Its structures are smoky and ill-defined. Pronsato is reticent to let any one element dominate the mix: The vocals weave in and out, the drums flutter to sudden stops, and the electric pianos thumb through just a few notes at a time.
Lovers Do picks up steam as it ends. The title track, which closes the album, sounds fittingly optimistic opposite the heavy-lidded opener, "Lovers Don't". There is a structure and logic to Lovers Do; it is immersive and artful but Pronsato went to great lengths to ensure that it not be overwhelming. Working again with muse Ninca Leece, Lovers Do acquires a femininity that suggests Lovers Do is a conversation, not an invective. Lovers Do casts this conversation into a diffuse cityscape, one whose darkness feels only temporary.
