Kurt Feldman is a sensualist among sensualists. The Brooklyn musician's day job consists of sitting behind the kit for the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Slumberland revivalists that first gained attention by building a time-traveling rocketship for all those bookish, next-gen indie-poppers who had never heard of Rocketship. A few years before that, though, he was a member of unheralded, neo-shoegaze outfit, the Depreciation Guild, a band that kicked things off by merging brittle chiptune textures with six-string swarm before arriving at the blissful, comfortable conclusion that, if the style itself ain't broke just yet, there's no need to fix it.
The projects that Feldman's been involved with over the last half-decade have been almost exclusively beholden to past sounds, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that Ice Choir, his mostly-solo endeavor following the Depreciation Guild's dissolution last year, once again finds him looking back with reverence. This time, though, the source material is different-- as well as a little surprising, considering his largely rock-heavy background-- as Ice Choir's debut LP, Afar, teems with the lush, swooning textures and big-money eccentricities of 80s pop and new-wave. Granted, when written out, that description is ripe for suspicion; various forms of independent subculture have spent the last few years as Inuits with an internet connection, consuming and discarding the 80s' every cultural facet until the decade itself resembles an imprint of where an animal carcass once lay. Some of the cannibalism has taken place under the guise of sincerity, while a lot of it has reeked of cynical opportunism.
Listening to Afar, however, it's very difficult to believe that Feldman, who wrote and produced the album by himself, is anything but totally serious about this new path he's travelling on. He doesn't just orbit around the usual reference points (Spandau Ballet, the jittery brightness of Jam & Lewis-produced R&B, OMD's more mainstream material)-- he nails them spot-on with an impressive and loving faithfulness, the only thing separating "then" from "now" being that I'm pretty sure nobody was gazing at a glowing computer screen while listening to "If You Leave" back in 1986. The crude, intentional cheapness that accompanies many a nostalgia-mining DIY act nowadays is avoided thanks to Feldman's own glossy production sheen, as well as the deft mixing hand of Jorge Elbrecht.
Elbrecht and Feldman are something of kindred spirits, since the former's band, Violens, are capable copyists as well; given Elbrecht's commendably warm and distant self-production on Violens' second LP, this year's True, he's an obviously inspired choice for collaboration. Same goes for Chairlift's Caroline Polachek, although her brief cameo on Afar's twinkling closer "Everything Is Spoilt by Use" briefly disturbs the environment around her before slipping back into perceived, unmemorable nothingness. Not exactly her fault, though, since Afar's hermetically sealed environment owes greatly to the singular voice of its creator. As a vocalist, Feldman impossibly smacks of another uncanny genre-hopper, Scritti Politti's Green Gartside. Kurt Feldman's voice is rubbery and capable as it races alongside the quick-footed patter of "Bounding" and trickles down the lovely synthetic waterfalls of "Teletrips"-- but it also retains an aromatic lightness, the same sort of wonderfully overpowering perfume that's caused many a listener to fall in love with Gartside's most affecting vocal performances.
The artistic connection is only cosmetic, though, and not just because Gartside's status as a fascinating, thoughtful pop innovator is, at this point, inimitable. As far as this sleek, lovely new sound of his is concerned, Kurt Feldman's got all the parts required, but he hasn't quite figured out how to perfectly put them together yet, to create songs as indelible as the ones immaculately fashioned by his heroes from the past. That's fine, though, because even Afar's most sketchily drawn material suggests that there's greater potential lying ahead-- and, besides, history has practically proven that he's bound to improve on what's here, since the Depreciation Guild's swan song, 2010's Spirit Youth, was richer and more complex than the 8-bit daggers of 2007's debut In Her Gentle Jaws (the former also yielded the project's finest stroke of post-adolescent romance, "Crucify You"). The past isn't just on Feldman's mind-- it could be very well on his side, too.
