Audio By Carbonatix
Well, fuck all that nonsense — it’s finally June 7th and Gloss Drop is finally out. It’s a good thing, too, since I believe Gloss Drop is one of 2011’s finest albums to date — a proper 1-B to the 1-A ranking of Fleet Foxes’ brilliant Helplessness Blues. Gloss Drop is a decadent, seamlessly crafted work of art. Hyperbole knows no end with this album — and I am being 100% genuine when I say that.
What the critics are saying:
Consequence of Sound: As a whole, the album has a lot of impressive musicianship, outstanding atmosphere, and interesting composition…Gloss Drop is an interesting sophomore release from a band that left itself room for plenty of future growth.
Clash Music: Their robotic, metallic guitars romp around, teasing out a baroque space opera that’s both seemingly measured in nano-bars and obsessed with pushing beyond the outer limits of our sonic understanding.
BBC Music: It’s Chilean artist Aguayo’s “Ice Cream” — rightly this album’s lead single — that really shines: a dazzling four-and-a-half minutes of grunts and groans, chimes and clatter, pings and zings and bells and whistles and the kitchen sink, it’s every bit as brilliant a treat as its titular inspiration.
Spin: Gloss Drop is an immersion in abstract tonalities, with Tropicalia-touched dark minimalism (“Rolls Bayce”), tetchy arrhythmic strings “(Africastle”), and propulsive funk (“Futura”). Braxton’s clever, found-sound loops are missed, but the remaining members’ rampant ideas and inexorable groove keep Battles engrossing.
Gloss Drop is out now via Warp.
