Bell Orchestre recorded their first release in a dozen years inside violinist
Sarah Neufeld's home in Vermont. The group's six members each took up a different room and spent two weeks working on ideas and improvising together. Ultimately,
House Music was born from a single spontaneous session, largely written on the spot and later edited and reconfigured to fit the album format. The result is an organic, smoothly flowing experience with an excellent sense of pacing. The album's mixing is impeccable -- it's easy to imagine the musicians holed up in separate rooms, but nothing sounds cluttered or disconnected. The group have always sounded triumphant and joyous, but the glee club enthusiasm of their earlier releases seems slightly reined in a bit here. Starting with a smudged loop prepared by bassist
Richard Reed Parry (like
Neufeld, also a member of
Arcade Fire), the album progresses from an airy, Motorik beginning, adding crackling percussive fills and spacy steel guitar. Rustic violin and distorted, squawking horns take over during the third movement, "Dark Steel," bringing it closer to an epic Spaghetti Western sound. "What You're Thinking" adds splashier, clangier, more ragtag percussion and wordless group vocals, as well as electronics that seem to approximate dripping water. Interlocked guitars, dusky trumpet, distorted drums, and choral vocals converge during the album's emotionally gripping centerpiece, "Movement," and the kalimba-driven "All the Time" brings the first side to a close. "Colour Fields" reintroduces the Motorik pulse from the beginning of the album, adding a vivid, trippy array of synths and horns, ending up with one of the most elated moments on the record. The final two tracks are a well-deserved comedown from a truly thrilling, energetic sequence. ~ Paul Simpson