Somadrone - Depth of Field

Conventional wisdom dictates that releasing an album during the final month of the year is a bad idea: the music press are usually in full-on retrospective mode before November's out, with all manner of looking-back and totting-up of year-end lists well under way. It can be easy for new releases to get lost in these frantic circumstances, and you can’t help but wonder whether any artists putting records out in December are in any way commercially-motivated.

It's rather convenient, then, that Somadrone – the solo recording project of The Redneck Manifesto’s Neil O’Connor – should have such a defiantly uncommercial sound to begin with. Although album number three Depth of Field is a more conventionally song-based affair than much of the San Francisco-based producer's previous material, this is still subtle, slow-burning stuff: eight tracks of mostly patient, minimal atmospherics. Opener ‘Vapours’ creates a sad, mournful mood through plaintive acoustic guitar, strings and melancholy vocals. Following it, ‘Providence’ must go down as a bit of a misfire: its slow-pulsing synths and drowsy harmonies are ultimately not up to the task of sustaining a six-and-a-half minute running-time. Much better is ‘Conversations’: a bleak-sounding piano intro gradually unfurls into a swelling, string-laden number. The instrumentation is busy but never cluttered, reflecting O’Connor’s concise grasp of dynamics.

The layered and intricate production on Depth of Field is pleasantly soothing – hypnotic in places even – and as a result it’s possible on first few listens to miss the attention-to-detail at work. Make no mistake: this is most definitely a headphones album, best accompanied by a wintry walk. The downside to this is that unfortunately Depth of Field loses much of its ‘depth’ during casual listening, straying dangerously close, in fact, to background noise territory. Much like Jim O’Rourke’s The Visitor LP from last year, which drew on similar influences (Reich, Glass, etc.), it’s a disc that rewards the more attentive listener. Penultimate track ‘POV’ is a fine example of this, its evocative minimalism and chiming coda perfect for the early hours. Closer ‘Ephemeral’ goes for a slightly different vibe, signing off on a menacing-sounding groove with an almost bluesy feel to it. A sign of things to come? Who knows? For now, Depth of Field will certainly do very nicely. It would be a crying shame to see it disappear beneath stacks of Now That’s What I Call Indie Landfill! 2010.