Pitchfork

Since Helios' Eingya is the third full-length by Boston-based composer Keith Kenniff, and the second from the same alias (Corduroy Road was released under the name Goldmund), you can't accuse him of not being serious about his work. Nor can you call him a dilettante or moonlighter: He's a Berklee College of Music grad who's served time since childhood in music lessons administered by a musically-inclined father (instead of playing outside or whatever), and his accomplishment and expertise on various instruments is gratifyingly apparent on all three of his releases.

But though Boards of Canada-jonesing listeners hailed Eingya when it was released last year as the ambient classic they'd gone however many years without, a cursory listen to the record showed that Kenniff at least thought he had a story to tell beyond the texture of his sound. Press materials alluded to European travel and a fascination with cinema to explain the record's narrative arcs, which was giving either too much credit or not nearly enough, depending on how much you liked what he ended up with.

When I first listened to Eingya it was mostly to "Vargtimme", a grindingly borderless, AM-station bit of noise that updated Eno and partnered well with NYC-drone duo Growing, who often work in the same just one sound vicinity. This was the lone spot on the album that didn't try to move me along to the next, which I appreciated. And I dodged the rest of the album-- save a few tracks incorporating field recordings of birds chirping and the like-- because it felt pushy: Upswells, dramatic builds, and arcs so familiar as to be meaningless, or worse, were all I could hear once I caught the trick.

Returning to the record, other things caught my ear. I wondered at the formally traditional guitar sound of the latter half of "The Toy Garden", an elegant and composed break from the song's otherwise heavy synthetic texture; the hollowed-out flute sounds that begin "First Dream Called Ocean"; and the bell-toned riffs that carry "Paper Tiger" into its flat bass-toned denouement. In any one of these sounds I could have remained.

Kenniff is trained as a percussionist, which might explain Eingya's forward-motion embrace, or we may have to give credit to the abhorrent "taking in influence from his knowledge of cinema" touted as a virtue in his press materials. My guess is the answer lies somewhere in between: Kenniff fits his movements to moods and classic shapes because it never occurred to him not to do so. And why not? Already he's in the business of making close-listening materials for an audience that likely hears his stuff via MP3s over computer speakers; spinning his music as more than just sound might be an unconscious survival mechanism.

Likely there's no fault here at all, except with this reviewer. My wishes for bedroom laptop music often seem opposed to those of its creators. I wish they'd worry more at their own subjectivity. Instead, I feel as though they impinge on mine.