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Everybody wants to bring back trip-hop, but no one remembers how filthy Dummy actually sounds. Seriously, where did all the low end go? So many of the bands reviving the genre today seem enamored of trip-hop solely as a comedown soundtrack, as if the era peaked with The K&D Sessions and the music was never something you might actually crank for its own sake. The genre completed its first life cycle when it morphed from the sound of the Wild Bunch’s sound system parties into a catch-all term for dreamy, head-nodding downtempo on both sides of the Atlantic; now, recent acts like a.s.o. and james K have whisked memories of old Bristol beats together with gauzy dream pop to create a fuzzy, faraway take on the era. As pretty as they are, most of these reimaginings only further cement trip-hop’s reputation as chillout music intended for headphones; all this nostalgia makes me ache for how narcotic, dubby—and, importantly—heavy those originators’ grooves could really get.
Like many of the pioneers who would go on to inspire the genre, Hysterical Love Project are resistant to being boxed in as trip-hop at all. But that doesn’t mean they’re afraid to plunge headfirst into its bassy depths. While the Melbourne-based husband/wife duo of Brooklyn Mellar and Ike Zwanikken deploy a similar bedroomy fusion as the newer artists mentioned above, texturally they’re in much murkier waters. After a handful of supremely mellow releases that blended lurching ’90s breakbeats with wintry, Mazzy Star-like songwriting, their third album dives into a vat of mercurial distortion and slippery, all-consuming bass. This is still swooning, dejected music designed more for the kick-back than the club, but even with Mellar’s gentle sighs, an entrancingly menacing aura lurks at the edges of these songs.
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With little information circulating about the duo, the anonymity surrounding February’s Album only adds to its sense of mystery. “I have a long-lasting obsession with perfect loops that you feel you could listen to forever,” Zwanikken said in what appears to be the group’s only published interview, and you can hear that fascination in the way these tracks lock into their grooves early and subtly explore their curvature. The dubby rhythm of “Myopia for Kindness” has a weight that heaves like factory gears shifting, layers of steamy reverb billowing off in waves, yet with an intimate clarity gifted by Brooklyn Mellar’s misty voice. Guitars practically seep from the mix, spiraling downward alongside the endlessly crashing hits of “The Moraliser,” and sidewinding through the barren, beatless “Window Down,” wobbling through a veil of unsettlingly phased out tape hiss as if Codeine took the wrong medication.
But there are plenty of other influences whirring away under the hood, too. You can hear the sickly rhythms of Seefeel and Bark Psychosis commingling with one another, radiating a shimmering coarseness that’s equal parts Chain Reaction and ’90s Kranky. It all blends together to give February’s Album a unique nocturnal glint. When the duo does commit to laying down beats, they do real justice to the dark, otherworldly feeling those old trip-hop classics captured, but from a fresh, blurry perspective. “Thinking Woman’s Lament” is a particular highlight, seemingly materializing out of nothingness; its hypnotic pulse draws you in even as Mellar’s detached voice remains hazily out of reach. Toward the end of “Limbo,” all the flickering sounds the band has woven throughout suddenly drop out, leaving only a guttural throb of bass in its wake. Hysterical Love Project never feel like they’re simply performing easy nostalgia tricks. You’ve heard these sounds before, but they’re not quite like you remember. They slip through your fingers as you try to grasp them, and the best you can do is watch them slither away and start to change again.
