★★★★☆
A dread-filled visit to the dental or doctor’s surgery this is not. Seattle’s Jeff McIlwain marks the moment where his name is called again with steady electronics and deep club determiners, within the general handling of similar but divergent electro DNA. Its disparate inserts are obvious; the way it hangs together just as much, becoming frontline relevant from whichever angle it’s travelling from.
Exclusively electronic doesn’t make for a virtual world of polygon windows, regardless of “Stratus” stepping into a dodecahedron-shaped rash of looped synths. Lusine’s angles of cosmic disco represent the challenge of the album, attempting and usually succeeding in gathering degrees of emotion (not even to humanise particularly) from the angular and steadfastly mechanical or artificial. “On Telegraph” hypnotically moves in no direction in particular, and “February” is sure to be big once the weather is more charitable.
Standing next to more image-conscious electro-pop (“Get The Message”), Lusine’s methods fiddle with differing strands running hot and cold at the same time, juggling processed vocals made distant (“Another Tomorrow,” a love song handled by robots) with balmy synth provisions. The variations continue with “First Call” coming off as a sneakily slick Hot Chip effort with more plug-ins and jerks of machinery. For an album that’s not especially light, it is served well by a double definition of flexibility.
File under: Vector Lovers, Woolfy vs Projections, John Tejada