Blush, Bows

Jungle is built on one essential tension--between hyperspeed drums and half-speed bass lines. Bows' debut, Blush, gives the screw another turn, setting tentative Björk-like vocals, languorous strings, and slow-motion keyboards to jarringly frantic beats. It's like a 4 a.m. dream, with a soundtrack by Roni Size. But there the New Forms comparisons end. Bows, the project of former Long Fin Killie frontman (and acclaimed novelist) Luke Sutherland, is an art project first and a dance-music crossover second. The emphasis is on mood, not momentum, and most of the time the mood is a barely articulated melancholy. That's no surprise coming from Glaswegian Sutherland; the "postrock" that Long Fin and Too Pure labelmates Pram and Laika made back in the day upended rock's rebel-boy verities, demoting its front-and-center aggression to background status and pushing its liquid substratum to the fore. Bows does the same thing to electronica traditions, producing an album that'll have you, to quote two wise men, dancing in your head and crying in your beer.

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