Under Review

Apostrophic

FLA (Romeda)

by Adrian Dziewanski


There’s something about anonymity in electronic music that gets me excited. One would be hard-pressed to argue that the name — or names — behind a project didn’t influence their own reception of that music, especially if those names belong to famous people, stalwart musicians, or friends. When a pseudonym is attached to the craft, however, with little emphasis on who stands behind it, it feels more about the music being produced and less about the person producing it.

Enter Apostrophic, a one-man electronic producer whose name you won’t find with a simple Google search. He has a couple of EPs under his belt, including this latest, FLA, released on the digital label Romeda. The knee-jerk comparison here is undoubtedly Boards of Canada, but FLA, over its 25-minute length, rarely dips into the sinister realms that BoC became known for. Instead, the atmosphere is a tension wire of nostalgia, temperance, and melancholia, best exemplified in the EP’s strongest track, “Scrch.” “Scrch” is given more space to hatch and develop than anything else on FLA. The track also showcases some ultra-dreamy guitar that, once you’re listening for it, is all over the album.

If “Scrch” is the album’s finest track, then the closer, “Sunset”, is a close runner-up. The track’s mélange of subdued, reverb-heavy beats and soft-focus synth lines are highly addictive. The final minutes pare everything back to little more than a delightful post-rock riff that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on an early Explosions in the Sky album, although, ultimately it comes and goes in little more than a blink. FLA not only leaves one thirsty for more but also leaves you wondering what marvels Apostrophic could conjure up without any beats at all. Here’s to hoping he’s saving that experiment for the next record.