I preface this like a disclaimer to those frustrated with what must be the limitations of my yankee-addled mind, but there are records I come across that feel more like an anthropological expedition than a typical listening experience. Or that might be the polite way to say TOMORA – the debut collaboration between Aurora and The Chemical Brothers' Tom Rowlands – had me clinging to my passport and trying to get home like an American tourist who booked Bucharest instead of Budapest.
There’s an American convention where if an artist is accused of pandering to 80s nostalgia, they are stoned to death and bludgeoned in the town square for all to see; conversely, TOMORA may very well live in that uniquely continental European time capsule where Eiffel 65 was Daft Punk. Come Closer is a hostage to 90s Euro-Club-isms and torn in half by the lesser devices of two highly talented individuals, a near-first in music where a collab brings out the worst in each participant.
And for what it’s worth, the opening tracks were a hell of a facade for this tourist trap. Stunning ballads abound in the first and last legs of this record; while bordering on the repetition which plague the dance tracks of the record, the title track and “A Boy Like You” flow with a remarkable stillness. It’s a shame the restraint and discipline that shape the record's quiet moments are extinguished in an onslaught of nakedly terrible whims for its core.
“Ring the Alarm” is one of the starkest examples of a track that betrays the listener in recent memory; not that it’s just a whiplash heel-turn from the established tone, but also in that it’s abhorrently stitched together noise. Listen, I use Los Thuthanaka as ASMR to fall asleep at night, but this is just a racket. The alarm sound effects are so incessant and the vocal refrains so grating that they had the fraught wisdom to separate them in time, but this is the worst sin of an unrepentant album: each time one of the duo gets a grip and lays down some music worth hearing, the other slaps auditory thumbtacks on top of it.
A decent rhythm by Rowlands on “My Baby” is at the mercy of Aurora’s poorly conceived warbled chorus, and Aurora’s attempt at some vocal intrigue on “Have You Seen Me Dance Alone” is left to dry by Rowland’s insulting take on some subtle Reggaeton. This may be the first dance record I’ve ever listened to where I was counting the seconds into the inevitable third act drag. At least when they lose energy do they make music worth repeating.
Unlike my countrymen, I am fully aware of the multiplicity of the world around me, the lives each person lives under the unfortunate banners of international borders and unjust warmongering. TOMORA, you’ve done something no person or institution could achieve in my 25 years of life; I am sparingly, desperately, unfortunately, and highly conditionally proud to be an American today. No, I already want to take that back.
