Luke Abbott hasn't so much developed as marinated. He has followed the gentle trajectory of Border Community labelmates like Nathan Fake and (label founder) James Holden. Five years, a half-dozen or so releases, one album. One album with little fanfare and no obvious banger. Last year's Whitebox Stereo EP impressed but hardly foretold future riches. His bashful, warm-hearted techno moves slowly, but apparently not slow enough; Abbott has camouflaged it with the word "drones."
Abbott hails from Norfolk, England, home of a small village named Holkham. The reference fits. Holkham Drones is techno for the English countryside. There is heartiness and contented fatigue in Abbott's music. It toils and labors, but only at a reasonable pace. Abbott often finds himself on the woozier side of Kraut-oriented beat music and the more rhythmic side of British atmosphere-building. His influences are easy enough to suss out: Harmonia and Manuel Gottsching, Seefeel, and the Cocteau Twins. Oval is an obvious influence.
Abbott, though, doesn't seem to care much for context. Holkham Drones feels like a self-contained world in which there is always an additional hour of sunlight. The album isn't some homogenous mishmash-- there are substantial differences between, say, the chiming, uptempo gleam of "Hello Tazelaar" and "Whitebox"'s thwumping sequences-- but Abbott seems to care less about their functional variances than their enduring moods. It's really difficult not to hear Holkham Drones as a positive album. At times the record sounds like a summer-months complement to Pantha du Prince's wintry romance, but there's nothing epic about Abbott. The good vibes here are tidier, perhaps as simple as enduring a day in which nothing negative really happened.
Abbott accomplishes this through mostly traditional sounds. There are no skewed rhythms, no wild programming adventures on Holkham Drones (Abbott comes closest to adventure on "Baalnk", an athletic, filter-laden pyschedelic frolic). Instead, there's a meticulous blend of wired static and gooey keyboards. Abbott's chords and progressions can be off-balance, but his drums are major and wide open.
The above makes Holkham Drones sound boring, but it's not. It's just regular in a way that makes some of Abbott's electronic peers seem skittish or overly ambitious. It's the rare electronic album that requires neither patience nor insider knowledge to admire. Holkham Drones is modest and quick to reward. If Border Community were taking over the world very slowly, Luke Abbott would be their newest lieutenant. But Abbott would probably rather you just enjoy your day.
