The record dissolve into an uber-pleasing sound, the sort of thing you imagine plays in Japanese public toilets.
(Company Records) http://www.konkurrent.nl
Sometimes the softest, most pliable sounds can be the strongest. Listening to Into by Vinyl Williams is akin to finding out that lying about on a beach is actually enjoyable and not the fat-skewered, flipflopped-out, processed-prole hell it seems to be. A case of the sensation winning out over the perception and all the half-baked socio-cultural theory. This record slips by you in the shimmering heat, sending over thought bubbles and snatches of melody to tease you. Things get so laid back on Into that you wonder whether you’ll ever need music again. The record dissolve into an uber-pleasing sound, the sort of thing you imagine plays in Japanese public toilets. So pleasing it’s a tad shady. Imagine if muzak was really really good and had a tradition like that of – oh I don’t know – Graeco Roman sculpture. That’s pretty much what Hall of Records, Allaz and Iguana City are. Muzakal Nikes of Samothrace; pearls in the canon of a non-existent genre.
At times there are hints at something else; Greatest Lives slides into view as a form of sissified Goff-electro,(imagine the Cocteau Twins as a noughties synth band). Eter Wave Agreement tries to do a drugged take on the Roses’ Full Fathom Five. Allaz is the softest Bootsy funk ever. Then there’s that cheeky imp Xol Rumi, which fancies itself as Hallogallo. And then there is the gloriously shimmering, “Rusalka calling a doomed youth to the waters edge” moment where Lush’s Scarlet is reborn as a glossy, buff chrome pop song. That hybrid is known as Zero Wonder.
I don’t know why I like, or play, this record so much. One of life’s mysteries.