On her first solo release away from
Minit,
Jasmina Maschina turns away from electronic to largely acoustic settings to produce a brief, enjoyable album that won't suddenly surprise listeners, but is still an exquisite, melancholic confection.
Maschina's singing, wistful and tinged with a hint of lost sorrow, calmly floats among the understated arrangements on the album's nine songs; samples and textures inform the songs but the feeling is of a live performance, though so carefully blended that trying to determine where the joints are is a bit of a mug's game. If generally of a piece, standout tracks still abound, the first being "Over," one of the collaborative efforts on the album, with guitar work from Torben Tilly and soft backing vocals on the gorgeous, wordless chorus adding extra depth to the kind of song that readily finds its midpoint between Sarah Records-style serenity and post-shoegaze reach. The calm lope of "Sister," with guitar and keyboards interweaving to suggest a gold-tinged sunset in some quiet corner of the universe, and the piano of A.B. Meyers on "Slow Walker," a series of reflective descents in a variety of styles as the song unfolds, help to flesh out the listen further, while the concluding "Asleep (Minit Variation)," the longest song at nearly nine minutes, stretches out the mesmerizing style of the album as a whole to an exultant piece of understated psychedelic drone, encompassing everything from the tinge of sitars to the cascade of feedback. ~ Ned Raggett