Descender

Descender

Along with guest musicians culled from Interpol, Tortoise, and The Libertines, Andrew Wyatt's 2013 set Descender features a 75-piece configuration of The Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. It's all arranged by Wyatt, the visionary frontman for the Swedish electro-pop band Miike Snow. Here, “Horse Latitudes” opens like a more expansive and symphonic version of Miike Snow. That is, until “Harlem Boyz” follows; it takes less predictable turns into realms of timeless chamber-pop synonymous with The Left Banke’s Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina and The Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle. But there’s also a strong 21st-century thread of sonic exploration here and throughout Descender. In the single “And Septimus...,” subtle guitar feedback and fluorescent synthesizer tones are sublimely woven into baroque-pop orchestrations, as Wyatt's breathy falsettos hover like fine mist. “Cluster Subs” brilliantly inverts this paradigm so that the more traditional-sounding instruments come off like bashful sounds skittishly interloping on his charted indie ensemble of more experimental textures.

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