Playback Head - Body of Water

Released: July 25

Listening through this album, the theme that kept coming to mind was that this was something incredibly "beachy," for lack of a better term. Everything I heard over the course of its roughly forty-five minutes is just so relaxed, carefree, and warm. I could envision myself laying under the shade of a tree, feeling the warmth of the sand, and listening to the waves roll gently onto the shore as time passed by lazily. Now, with many albums that fall into the general category of ambient, there is extensive use of field recordings to push this imagery forward. And while Playback Head does utilize such techniques in this album, these play mainly a smaller supporting role compared to the deceptively simple instrumentation used. These moods and images are conjured more by the lo-fi tones of an aging keyboard, the the clean percussion, and the surf rock inspired guitar tones that can be found in varying amounts throughout the whole album. 

The opener to this album was something that managed to throw me off and introduce me to the thematic elements at play simultaneously. "Children's Loop" begins with the sounds of very young children making random noises (as kids are apt to do) that soon shifts into a short piece of toy keyboard music with a degraded tape quality. But this short little introduction is extremely effective in setting the altogether lo-fi aesthetic of the album. By the second track, we can hear exactly what this album is all about as those aging keyboards come together with island-inspired percussion played at slow paces with that wonderful spring reverb guitar bringing it all together. 

With the guitar on this album, each song gives it to us in varying doses. In tracks like "South Beach," it keeps itself mainly in the background, providing a gentle bit of arpeggios that help to carry things along. But then " Tropic of Capricorn" brings it all the way to the fore with a magnificent solo that endures for over half of the runtime, never sounding stale and consistently changing up as the errant tones of a warped lo-fi keyboard. Later on in the album, tracks such as "Memory Island" bring about a slightly cloudier tone as a simpler arrangement comes takes over with gentle plucks of the guitar, soft whooshes, and crickets in the background bring about images of the slowly setting sun and a smattering of clouds patchily covering its reddening hue. There is something really quite soothing about this album, from start to finish. Even with the start being slightly jarring, the hazy charm persists throughout.