Half the fun of listening to Heterotic’s Weird Drift is trying to pin down exactly what kind of record it is. On their second album together, Planet Mu founder Mike Paradinas (aka µ-Ziq) and his wife Lara Rix-Martin flirt with a dozen or more styles and subgenres without settling on any particular one for very long. The opening track, “Self Importance,” with its pulsating arpeggios and reverb-y synth strings, oscillates between 1980s acid house and '80s horror movie soundtrack vibes; from there, they make their way through gothy ambience, funky electro-pop, and sleek techno.
Despite Weird Drift's genre-busting ambitions, the album feels humble and unpretentious. Paradinas has been making music for so long and in so many different styles that he has very little left to prove to anyone, so there’s nothing ostentatious or show-offy about the record’s genre excursions. And although Rix-Martin doesn’t have as many credits under her belt as her husband, her work curating his 2013 retrospective anthology Somerset Avenue Tracks (1992-1995) showed a refined, understated taste and an intuitive ear. They seem like smoothly synergistic collaborators, and even at its most adventurous Weird Drift still has a comfortably casual air.
There are a few beautiful moments where that casual energy manifests beyond a series of pop references. “Rain” nails a specifically airy, chilly sound with an effortlessness that countless British pop-R&B bands in the late '80s would have killed for, while “Lumber” balances a distorted rap beat and layers of ethereal vocals in a compellingly crooked way, resembling a new twist on trip-hop transmitted through a low-fi pirate radio frequency. Quasi-dub cut “Foghorn” interrupts a the album’s generally well-mannered mood with a resinous reggae bass line and blaring, Inception-style low brass that drift blissfully through clouds of Detroit techno synths and Funkadelic-style acid-rock solos.
Heterotic's easygoing experimentation provides one of Weird Drift’s strongest aspects, but it also works to the duo's disadvantage. The album’s peripatetic stylistic wandering takes it to interesting places, but it also lacks a cohesive aesthetic identity--it, well, drifts. When Paradinas and Rix-Martin head in a pop-focused direction, it sounds great in the moment but the hooks aren’t sharp enough to stick around afterwards. Largely, the album doesn’t possess much in the way of gravity or edge.
The album finally finds the focus that it needs on the last song, “Empires”, which is ironically the record's sole moment where it also enters clichéd territory. A piano twinkles over slow-changing chords and a gently thumping kick drum, elements that skirt banality when paired with the inspirational mood conjured up by the arrangement's gently rising and falling action. The song sounds like something from a soundtrack for a feel-good sports movie, but it resonates in a way that the rest of Weird Drift fails to.
