The label Motion Ward has a very particular feel for the fragile interface between hyper-fine ambient underground and darkened indie interpretations. These interesting in-between spaces can also be found on Lavurn’s Baby It Cold Outside, an album that audibly looks back to the turn of the millennium, rich in trip hop and dream pop. Across the album’s 35 minutes, however, that period is not merely reproduced nostalgically, but viewed through the murky glass of the present. Memories are reassembled through digital compression, glitchy reinterpretation and contemporary pop sensibility.
This becomes especially clear on »Playback«. The previously present, jangly guitars recede. In their place come frayed breaks, bright, almost harp-like chords and a fragile vocal line. »Handy« also shows how precisely Lavurn works with blur: panting synths and finely cut beats shift the perspective here. An intriguing moment in which the album loosens its pop form and exposes its deep electronic layers. Baby It Cold Outside is thus less nostalgia than a hyperreal condensation of old and new aesthetics – a pop memory in the half-dark.
Baby It Cold Outside
