Music

Album review: Art Department’s ‘Natural Selection’

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Two stars

Art Department Natural Selection

It’s hard not to hear the follow-up to Art Department’s revered debut album The Drawing Board as an indictment against the current state of dance music, despite members Kenny Glasgow and Jonny White saying nothing of the sort during recent interviews. But it’s the elephant in the studio, so to speak. Just as the “deep” movement has essentially become the de facto aural alternative to commercial EDM, tech/deep house darlings Glasgow and White seem to be musically distancing from it—not unlike how some progressive house producer/DJs in the early 2000s went so austere as to seemingly weed out the fair-weather fans.

Natural Selection threatens to alienate the house base as well by purposely sidestepping any hint of modern dance music, its menacing basslines boasting an edge rather than fluidity and Glasgow rendering his vocals so melancholic that it pushes AD’s post-millennial electronic forays further into dystopia. For instance: Percolating and cascading synths can’t save “It’s Through,” a downtempo, minor-key affair plagued by Glasgow’s sad-sack delivery. Most of the tracks follow suit except “Walls,” which conveys its moonlit drama in a more subtle and melodic way, not unlike an old Depeche Mode nugget. It feels like the least forced song on Natural Selection, an effort that infuses very little discovery—or life—in its various experimentations.

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