Jakub Alexander's debut album as Heathered Pearls had the all the heft of a desert mirage. That was its chief attraction, but also its chief flaw. Loyal offered track after track of beatless shimmer, and it was gorgeous, but after a while, you could be forgiven for wanting something a little more substantial to sink your teeth into.
Body Complex retains Loyal's delectable lightness but wisely injects a little more variety and a lot more physicality. Per the new album's title, you can actually dance to many of these songs. Although the rosy glow of his synthesizers remains the music's organizing principle and main attraction, six of the new album's 10 tracks feature crisp, boom-tick drum programming. His beats aren't terribly ornate or advanced, but they're utilitarian in a way that suits listening as well as dancing. Like a square black frame around a watercolor, they help to delineate all the washed-out frequencies they contain.
The shoegaze- textured "Personal Kiosk" balances murky chords with scraped cymbals, while "Perfume Catalog" attaches a muffled machine beat to gauzy choral pads and high-end shimmer; it sounds a little like some heavenly fusion of Actress, 10cc's "I'm Not in Love"—or the first few seconds of it, anyway—and Newworldaquarium's "Trespassers", still the high-water mark for the treble register in techno. "Warm Air Estate", featuring a singer named Outerbridge, points to a possible next step for Alexander's project: actual songs. His vocals remain indistinct, but the mere presence of a voice, with a clearly defined bassline, makes for the most corporeal music Heathered Pearls has made yet.
Still, the atmospheres remain Heathered Pearls' selling point, with their tantalizing combination of magic-hour sunlight and gooey haze. "Cast in Lemon & Sand" and "Artificial Foliage" both sound a lot like Victorialand-era Cocteau Twins with the attack softened and the reverb blown way out. Cocteau Twins are, like Kate Bush and New Order, one of those acts that far too many artists try to emulate without really understanding what makes them tick, but Alexander gets it. Maybe that's not surprising, given that his alias sounds like a mockup for one of Vaughan Oliver's sleeves for 4AD. Alexander, who A&Rs for Ghostly and selects music for Tycho's design-centric ISO50 blog, is nothing if not knowing when it comes to the combined power of word, music, and image, which makes his choice of song titles a little bit surprising. "Perfume Catalogue", "Sunken Living Area", "Holographic Lodge"—they read almost as parodies, as ironic commentary on ambient music's frequent role as a kind of lifestyle accessory. Fortunately, Body Complex never gets bogged down by ambient music's wallpaper associations. This isn't music for living rooms; it's music for living in.
