Over the past several years, as European electronic music's moved from its all-minimal-everything phase into fuzzier areas, I've made a mental note of comparing no less than a dozen young producers to Plaid. I didn't listen to Plaid-- British production duo Andy Turner and Ed Handley-- very much, not even their 1999 mini-masterpiece Rest Proof Clockwork. Instead they remained faintly but firmly ensconced in my memory, the result of a burgeoning electronic music fan seeking a group Radiohead wasn't constantly namedropping (scratch Aphex Twin, Autechre), but that was still available at Sam Goody. I would never suggest that Plaid were a direct inspiration for a group like Mount Kimbie, though there are worse things than being a token in the revival of soft-focus, reasonably scaled beatmongering.
Scintilli is Plaid's first non-soundtrack work since 2008 and their first proper studio album since 2003 (2006's Greedy Baby having been an audio/video collaboration). It doesn't count as a "new direction" for the duo because they've never really fucked with "direction" in the first place. At their best, Plaid nestled into the wide crevasses between hardline, dystopian techno, broken beat, and experimental composition. Their synthesis was recognizable but not unrepeatable; they stood out for their casual, unhurried sense of adventure. (In the late 1990s, they were called Intelligent Dance Music because their records had "Warp" on the back, and they didn't sound like Moby.)
There's a danger in this lack of direction, though: sometimes you exist comfortably outside electronic-music narratives and sometimes you get lost. Scintilli isn't the first time Plaid have stumbled into the latter state; all things being equal, they operate in this mode better than most. Still, Scintilli underwhelms, lacking the ease with which Plaid used to stitch sound together. They're no longer inscrutable; like their previous work, Scintilli contains heavy doses of sounds that rile, pacify, and intrigue, but here they constantly tip their hand. The dolloping keyboards of "Craft Nine" calm; the walloping bass of "Sömnl" disrupts.
Plaid's skillful incorporation of the female voice remains intact (Björk sometimes seems to aspire to "Lilith", her 1997 collaboration with the duo) on soft-footed opener "Missing" and closer "At Last". Their overall sound has remained eclectic even as their tracks grow compartmentalized. I still appreciate Plaid's baselessness-- how I can never quite place what I'm listening to. They're less diffuse than their late-90s Warp peers but far more so than, say, Mouse on Mars or Flying Lotus, artists with whom Plaid share sensibilities but little more. I find Scintilli-- and its ambitious alternating of composure and chaos-- admirable, but "admirable" sounds (and feels) like a backhanded complement. I would prefer to find it fizzy or confusing or aggressive. Scintilli is a disappointingly static record from a duo of born tinkerers.
