Pitchfork

After six albums of sedate post-shoegaze pop, Connecticut-based quartet Landing have gradually seen their work overtaken by the dread shadow of familiarity. So on Brocade-- their return to Strange Attractors after albums on Ba Da Bing! and K-- the group has sensibly taken a hard step away from dreamcore to a slight return to the gauzy space-rock of earlier records like 2002's Fade In/Fade Out, an exchange that includes its own distinct set of pitfalls. On Brocade, however, Landing makes enough strategic use of Kraut-inspired rhythms and shimmering, repetitive minimalism to help sidestep the New Age perils of their ambient celestial navigations.

The quartet is still based around the husband-and-wife duo Aaron and Adrienne Snow, but since the release of their 2004 album Sphere founding member Dick Baldwin has moved on, and was replaced by keyboardist Peter Baumann. Seizing upon this subtle change in dynamic, Landing essentially recorded Brocade live in the studio, allowing the album's five tracks to naturally expand and contract with a graceful, unforced dexterity. And unlike much of their recent material, the group spares little attention to either pop songcraft or discernable lyrics, as vocals are kept offstage for nearly the entire length of the album.

Bursting forth with an uncharacteristically dissonant thrum of feedback, the opening "Loft" soon settles into an agile, motorik lumber, working some of the same rich, patterned fields as Caribou's The Milk of Human Kindness. Throughout the track, competing swells of keyboard lap softly at the rhythm's sturdy shoreline, but this seawall soon crumbles on the percussion-less likes of "Yon" or "Spiral Arms". On these lengthy pieces, Landing's combinations of tranquil strings and synth drones can at times achieve the spirited delicacy of Brian Eno's collaborations with Cluster. That said, it's often only the group's melodic economy and the occasional loosened analog buzz that distinguishes these tracks from the tepid watercolors that typically soundtrack the Dead Man's Pose at yoga class.

It comes as a pleasant shock, then, to have your slumber disrupted by the hard-driving "How to Be Clear", Landing's grungiest track to date. The song also features the album's lone vocal, albeit one buried beneath distortion. The track's invigorating effect is magnified when contrasted with the mesmerizing set closer, "Music For Three Synthesizers", a hazily-unfolding epic that takes a sheet or two from Keith Fullerton Whitman's music stand. True to its title, this piece features three unaccompanied synths captured in effortlessly transfixing dialogue, as Landing sagely permit themselves to be lifted off course, carried skyward by their music's patient, weightless ascension.