There's something familiar about Xela's sound, a feeling that you've heard this chord, that click, this melody somewhere before. It doesn't nag at you or scream "derivative"; it's not, for example, like hearing a sampled loop and not resting until you've pinned down the source. Instead, one gets the feeling from For Frosty Mornings and Summer Nights of settling into old pajamas, sitting in oversized chairs on the beach, getting lost in the woods behind your house on purpose. A nostalgic mood tints the whole album, creating an aural equivalent to Super 8 home movies-- taken, most likely, on Mars. Like Boards of Canada, whose artwork and imagery intentionally conjure visions of nylon jackets, sepia tone and childhood circa 1977 in general, Xela (John Twells) crafts songs that are clear in their emotion, focused and difficult to misread.
Not a little of the album's approach is inspired by Twell's friend Lee Norkin and his work under the guise of Metamatics; his Neo Ouija album is a definite mentor here, though without the more dance-fueled rhythms Norkin flexes with that name. "Under the Glow of Streetlights" and the ponderous, patient "The Long Walk Home at Midnite", whose pleasures are revealed slowly and with keen pacing, are good examples of the beats to be found on For Frosty Mornings: as fractured as Dos Tracks or early Pole, but with a wide berth between the pieces. At their most coherent, the rhythms on the record are inspired click 'n' cut textures, lazy BPMs that ride the ambience through till the end. The closer, "Last Breathe", pulls off a beat I can only describe as tropical, and backs it with a crying trumpet and the sobs of a woman, and while Manitoba and Marumari can conjure similar vibes, it's impressive how well Xela works it.
It's the ambient elements, the gentle ebb and flow of layers of synth and extended chords, where the influences show the most. Marumari, Selected Ambient Works, WE; all of them know how to pull this technique off, and Xela adds himself to their ranks by copping a few licks here and there: "Afraid of Nowhere" bears The Mark of the 'Twin, and as excellent as "Japanese Whispers" gets, it's still leaning a bit heavily on the shoulder of Prefuse 73, with Music Has the Right to Children driving it to the airport. The sullen "An Abandoned Robot" fares better, raining down shimmering chimes into a thick soup of chords, rippling out and out and out, punctuated with Oval-ish skips and crackles provided by Stefan Lewandowski.
I drive through the woods to work now, and with all the partially sunny days lately, For Frosty Mornings has been perfect for a sleepy, half-lit drive home over the mountain. It gets under your skin not with hooks or basslines, but with a mood that the chosen tones and pacing enforce for the duration of the record. It plays like a cohesive whole, a steady set of hills and valleys with perfect curves. It may go unnoticed on a label like Neo Ouija, whose content can often be described on similar terms, but Xela has put out a fucking nice record, a chill-out album that makes the term "chill-out" respectable again. This album is a sleeper in every sense of the word. Funkstörung for the content and drowsy.
