Although not as wry as the title suggests,
Pub's debut album borrows the liquid rhythms and the soft arcs of
Seefeel and the beat avoidance of
Bola and
Arovane. The music here is lush and seldom overpowering, even psychologically, as similar ambient LPs tend to be in the hopes for ironic abstraction. From the early morning haze on the cover to the restraint on digital textures,
Pub probably hoped to produce something on the level of
Boards of Canada, but even in the excellent "Overcome," they could rarely take it above chillout's painstakingly layered limitations. ~ Dean Carlson