Euphoria

Descripción

.com Euphoria make slide-groove "guitronica," blending spacey beats with looping spoken word, breathy vocals, multilayered guitar wash, and intense yet playful drum and keyboard programming. Featuring more fingerpicking and strummy noodling than their electronically centered genre sisters, Euphoria are a stylistic hybrid that works due to their low-key yet pointed adherence to aesthetics. The brief "Notting Hill Gate," for example, opens with deliciously blues-inflected fractured slide à la John Fahey and adds Dobro, ney, and swell cymbal to make something both exotic and altogether familiar. "Lost on a River" places Maddie Willis's multitracked soulful vocals at center, gorgeously complementing the unusual "orchestra" of funk guitars, Hammond B3, and acoustic bass. Elsewhere, Euphoria go all oozy with melting ambient drips of sound or forge new means of rhythmic travel (think Pell Mell) as on the beautifully orchestrated closer "The Road," featuring reverberating and chiming guitar work, harmonica, shattered key and drum accents, and brilliantly utilized bagpipes. --Paige La Grone