Dylan Khotin-Foote’s debut album, 2014’s Hello World, remains a highlight of the so-called lo-fi house revival of the past few years, in which the application of a faint patina of wear has put a fresh spin on relatively straightforward club constructions. A little bit like the “antiqued” furniture at Restoration Hardware, the technique can be gimmicky, and a little bit of scuffing goes a long way. But on songs like “Hello World” and “Ghost Story,” Khotin’s scratchy drum machines and pastel-toned synth melodies came out as polished and tactile as the contents of a rock tumbler; his distortion yielded super-saturated sounds that were berry-rich and bursting with tone. The record was right at home on Vancouver’s 1080p label, although the imprint’s prolific release schedule also meant that it was easy for the album to get lost in the shuffle. That’s too bad, because it’s a fair bet that at least a few of the hundreds of thousands of people who have checked out Ross From Friends and DJ Boring on YouTube would be equally thrilled with Khotin’s misty-eyed house miniatures.
On New Tab, the Canadian producer’s instincts still lead him to sounds so bright and optimistic that they scan as almost naïve. This time, though, he largely forgoes house beats in favor of ambient music’s placid swirl. It’s a breezy, uncomplicated record; with its rich colors and simple recurring patterns, it’s reminiscent of a packet full of pearl-finish snapshots of the sky or the ocean, each one a brand-new treatise on the meaning of blue. The album title might indicate vaporwave’s hermetic perspective, but Khotin’s music actually suggests a wide-open embrace of the world outside. It’s laced with rumbling trains, running water, and ribbiting frogs; synthesizers glisten like dewdrops, and delay piles up like streaked contrails.
These are mostly static vistas; they don’t much develop or evolve. But Khotin imbues them with just enough movement to keep them engaging. In “Canada Line,” slow-attack pads come on like a freight train heard through the veil of sleep. In “Wheeler Road,” the edges of his chords break like the surface of a whitecapped lake. A slow, deliberate conga pattern stirs the waters of “Dialogue 6,” while in “Something Is Happening to Me,” a stuck delay pedal creates the illusion of energy waves rippling into infinity. Occasionally, he relies on scraps of found audio to draw his vignettes into focus: In “Dotty,” scavenged answering-machine tapes sneak us into an unknown woman’s living room, to surprisingly bittersweet effect.
The album builds gradually up to its final three songs, at which point Khotin subtly changes up the music’s intensity, adding skeletal beats back into his squishy ambient soundscapes. If much of New Tab recalls Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Vol. II, the album’s final stretch sounds like a tribute to ’90s IDM acts like Plaid and Arovane. “New Window” pivots back and forth like a lawn sprinkler, its beat rigid against the rainbow spray of its digital synths; “Health Pack” evokes the choppy moves of Gescom’s rose-tinted B-boy fixations. The best of the beat-heavy trio is “Fever Loop,” which plays a slow-motion breakbeat against burbling bubbles and piano-house keys hammered into a fine gold leaf. Like the rest of the album, it is an unassuming piece of work that casts a powerful spell. Using humble materials, Khotin has created a deeply expressive and surprisingly affecting album, one that takes the broad outlines of ambient music and makes them feel fresh again.
