Pitchfork

Photo by Jimmy Edgar

Remember the title of Metro Area man Morgan Geist's years-in-the-making solo jaunt when listening to the Italo-techno-r&b of advance mp3 "The Shore". From the Brooklyn producer's forthcoming Double Night Time on Environ, this phosphorescent track conjures moonlit desolation rather than tropical idyll, with Junior Boys' Jeremy Greenspan contributing limpid, mannered vocals (as he does elsewhere on the album). There can be a humbling beauty in walking alone by the water at night, but it's no day at the beach.

Unlike Geist's 2006 single with Greenspan, "Most of All", which had dreamy electric guitar, "The Shore" is almost exclusively electronic. A bassline of jittery funk trades off with flashing organ sounds on the verses, programmed percussion hissing like the waves down on the beach. The choruses find some release in ascending synth runs. "It's OK to let it out," Greenspan coolly repeats. Sustained keyboard chords recalling Hot Chip's "Made in the Dark" spread out toward the conclusion, made more disorienting by stereo-panned bleeps. Despite some clunky lyrical phrasing, it's here that Greenspan's narrator finds a way to forget-- at last!-- the person whose memory he's been drowning in these waters all along.

[from Double Night Time; due in September on Environ]