This isn’t an album that’s typical of Warp, if indeed there is a ‘typical’ Warp album. And in their 20th anniversary year, where we’ve seen a string of high quality releases from the likes of Clark, Harmonic 313 and Bibio, to name but a few, this is up there with one of the most distinctive. Braxton is part of the wonderful Battles band, but his style is very different from theirs, heavily influenced by 20th century ballet music and jazz. ‘Central Market’ is written for a small orchestra but has a lot of electronic trimmings and studio trickery on the side, and Braxton manages to use all these elements with care, rarely overloading the textures. Cheeky, raspy clarinets reek of Stravinsky in ‘The Duck And The Butcher’, while the vigorous down strokes of ‘Platinum Rows’ are striking. What impresses most in this ambitious album is Braxton’s confident orchestration and sense of drama, structuring his music for maximum impact. The white noise of ‘Dead Strings’ gets a bit much on headphones, but overall this is another experiment for Warp that comes up trumps.
4 Out Of 5
Reviewed By: Ben Hogwood