On their debut long-player Animals, longtime 12" fiends Minilogue settle themselves long enough for electronic fans to get a good look. Like Lindstrøm-- with whom Minilogue share little, if anything else, in common-- the Swedish duo of Sebastian Mullaert and Marcus Henriksson have long favored singles, issuing slabs for Traum, Wagon Repair, and Wir, among others, that feature some combination of minimal, house, and trance. Animals, released on Germany's excellent Cocoon Recordings, flouts the conventions of 12"s, offering four sides of music-- two of traditional Minilogue fare and two dedicated to ambient platters-- that clock in at more than two-and-a-half hours. Animals takes mammoth amounts of dedication, and its rewards come mostly in the form of dark, room-shading atmospheres, no matter the tempo.
Minilogue have always seemed a little bit playful-- see their name, a conflation of "minimal" and "dialogue," or the cheeky synth-work on their "Space" single-- but Animals, apart from its weirdly mesmerizing cover art (and the fact that one track is named "Giant Hairy Super Monster"), plays things fairly close to the vest. The first disc is the tech-house LP Minilogue fans have been waiting for, and it seeks weedy, murky terrain. It leans heavily towards modern minimal, unleashing deep bass concussions that leaving chalky, muted imprints. Inch the volume too low and Animals is nothing more than a surface twitter, a light frost in your living room. Appropriately leveled, Animals rumbles and ducks; you can imagine the tiny clay bedevilments that adorn the cover art marching in file to "33000 Honeybees" or lounging gamely during "Hitchhiker’s Choice". "Jamaica", the album's best track and appropriate recipient of a follow-up EP, is the duo's sweet-spot: sternum-high bass clutter lays the groundwork for seagull calls and tittering percussion. It is as spunky as the record’s title implies and as winkingly conducted as the duo's prior output.
Sequenced like a DJ mix, Animals coalesces into one long under-radar flight. The jazzy keyboard sounds of "Giant Hairy Super Monster", the whooshing electronic film of "Hypnotized", the jumpy arpeggios of the title track-- all of these are competent, well-executed gestures, but they also feel rote, like Minilogue has a minimal/trance/house checklist and is crossing sounds off. It is strangely unadventurous and staid, blue-collar in the face of the duo's previously toucan garb.
The disc-closing "In a Distance" and its warm, softly brushed pulses, while drawn from the duo's regular palette, offer the first glimpse of the bog into which the duo wanders. On the second disc, Mullaert and Henriksson take the disembodied tones that float through their work and spread them over long beatless passages; macro photographs of the bass-bass-skitter of the first disc. Repeated notes or the occasional muffled kick-snap offer some measure of timekeeping. It's alien territory, but Minilogue sound neither lazy nor disconnected: "Old Water" is a meditative prayer; "Swamp Op" makes eyes at cabin fever as a rusty guitar leaks notes; "Even the Wind Seemed in Deep Sleep" ends gorgeously, with falling rain and subterranean tones. The occasional clipped dialogue gives the record a sci-fi feel, like Boards of Canada or music from the Ghost Box label. One such clip in "Six Arms and One Leg" provides Animals a mantra: "Strange words in the dark/ And elephants on the wall." Appropriately disembodied and hushed.
Animals is a distended exploration of known sounds and moods-- first through traceable beatmaking and then, strangely, through ambient blur-- and its successes arrive at unexpected times. The second disc is sure to drive some tech-heads bonkers, but it feels breezy and weird after the tightened screws of disc one. Enjoy the whoosh when the band releases the pressure and hope they’ve got more big surprises up their sleeves.
