No longer a solo alias for multi-instrumentalist and producer
Jakob Skott,
Syntaks officially transforms into a duo on
Ylajali. The album features the wordless, largely textural voice of new member Anna Cecilia, who appeared as a guest on 2006's Awakes. Inspired by Knut Hamsun's 1890 novel Hunger, and recorded a short distance from the location where the book was written,
Ylajali -- named after the mysterious woman who eludes the protagonist, a shriveling drifter -- nonetheless seems more affected by its sonic touchstones: lush dream pop, wistful IDM. It's a remarkable progression from the inert clunkiness that prevented Awakes from rivaling the best of its new school of ambient dream pop class (
Manual's
Ascend,
Ulrich Schnauss'
A Strangely Isolated Place). Even when it most resembles a Morr Music tribute to
Harold Budd and
the Cocteau Twins' The Moon and the Melodies, it is doubtlessly capable of rousing the most lapsed of shoegazers. ~ Andy Kellman