Victor Bermon's debut is thirteen pastiches of I-can't-tell-how many other songs, thirteen simple truths fused of so many seemingly incompatible conversations. Delicately disassembled, arranged meticulously, considered carefully and then constructed as if into wondrous glass figurines, each song feels airy and effortless until listened to with a more attentive ear, at which point the complexity of their many moving parts becomes plain.
Arriving at Night suggests the image of a watchmaker at work. Magnified scrutiny, precision and detail, the result is a confluence of unquestionable operation. For all the effort, the album works in a straightforward way.
Like the gorgeous lounge of opener "Farewell Lunch for Laura," which sways with sleepy chimes and contrapuntal percussion including sampled typewriter strikes that clack away while drums break in and out of harmony.
The song builds easily to "We Face Each Other," which never crests on its own simmering waves, and finally to the perfect (and genuine song-of-the-year candidate) "Photographs Are Not Memories." "Photographs" naturally balances ambient and rhythmic electronica and warm piano signatures that betray a true knowledge of the possibilities for musical arrangement.
The Four Tet approximation of "Unprepared" and its follow up "View of the Islands" will have greater resonance with fans of Rounds (2003) than of the experiments that came afterwards, but also are never quite as overt.
Arriving at Night proves to be the perfect title – far below, undetermined structures blink in the night as all around you an airliner cabin throbs and hums fellow passengers to sleep. Bermon takes care of the details, allowing you to enjoy the simple, unquestionable operation; the plane simply flies.
You look out the window.-Conrad Amenta, Coke-Machine Glowhttp://www.cokemachineglow.com/feature/2007-half/index.html
