For rockers dipping a toe into the unstable sea of electronic music, the guitar can serve as a sort of emergency floatation device: Helpful to those who haven't given up on notions of the guitar's emotional supremacy, distracting to those who prefer to swim, though they risk sinking. The guitar parts were the least interesting elements of Leeds duo Worriedaboutsatan's first two EPs of IDM-bolstered post-rock, subjugating atmospheric subtleties to prosaic chord progressions.
On Arrivals, they abandon the guitar on the shore and paddle out past the breakwater, into a vast and shifting calm. (In reality, they still use guitars, although they are seldom recognizable as such.) It retains post-rock's long stride while jettisoning its typical palette, blending it with a variety of moods-- dub's spaciousness, trip-hop's sullenness, ambient music's austerity, and minimal techno's grid-based pitter-patter, all seamlessly rolled together in alert modulations of intensity.
The bass on this album is so distant and ruminative that it seems partially submerged, like the back of an immense sea-creature rhythmically slipping above and below the waves. The percussion is manicured yet spritzy, with the baroque cadences of spitting rain. Periodic vocal samples are hung about in hazy washes, making it sound a bit like Burial for English-Lit majors. The structures are crescendo-based, but arrive by such creeping degrees that we're never jarred, only soothed, lulled.
This is consummate mood-music that glints with striking details. There's the high, held tone cycling through the nocturnal drive of "I Am a Crooked Man", with its nearly visual wobble. There's the telegraphic progression of "Pissing About", a stable axis in a prismatic blur of texture and rhythm. There's the strangulated glitch-melody of "History Is Made at Night", seeming always on the verge of breaking into lush glissando. Who needs guitars when you've got string-like themes scudding majestically above rippling sonar blips, scratchy-record percussion giving form to rushing waters and howling winds? The music is so immaculately tasteful that it's hard to figure out how they chose such a silly band name. (It's from a song by the Belgian band dEUS, which makes it no less silly.) But they got the album title right-- they've arrived.
