Freescha are a duo from California who produce the sweetest kind of downtempo electronic ditties. Their newest album is called What's Come Inside of You--which is a fantastically listenable imaginary soundtrack to a sci-fi porno--but I've chosen to review their previous CD Slower Than Church Music for its sort-of obvious ambient content.

Church Music begins somewhat surprisingly with an erzatz-Autechre, Chiastic Slide era crunchy noise breakdown. This is something of a musical pisstake for Freescha, however, because this one and a half minute grind gives way to some of the most beautiful Boards of Canada-inspired electronic music I've heard. Some have criticized newer electronic acts who follow Boards of Canada's lead in creating that wistful style of electronics that made Hi Scores and Music Has the Right to Children so listenable and popular. Perhaps this displays a lack of musical originality on the part of these newer artists--though I prefer to think of it as a welcome style of music that, when done well, is perfectly luscious and welcome in my record collection. Alongside Arovane's Tides, I feel that the work of Freescha comes closest to capturing what made BoC so very exciting when they began making music.

What separates Freescha's music from mere mimicry is their focused attention to melody and surprise in the space of individual tracks. While Boards of Canada's work is driven by a large amount of short, sometimes throwaway, tracks, Freescha choose to populate their albums with fewer tracks and more progressive, Brian Wilson inspired, downtempo songs. A great example of this is the track "Boogy Foot" which begins with a sauntering cymbal stomp, stops abruptly midtrack, then begins again in an entirely different mode, this time with a faster tempo and a dramatic melody. The last track on Slower Than Church Music, titled simply "Church Music" is absolutely the highlight. It begins quietly with jangling, processed gong or chime sounds, giving way to a reverent organ-like tone. This gradually opens up into beautiful rainswept chords and an extremely slow beat. Broken melodies filter in, and eventually the tempo swells to a somewhat faster pace (though by no means fast). Somehow, Freescha manage to squeeze a synth choir of angels to bring you right up to heaven with their artificially-[intelligence] sweetened church music. Yes-ah, in the name of the father, and the son, and the holy ghost, you will be hitting the repeat button on this one till judgement day.

Freescha's command of melody is more practiced than Boards of Canada's, which makes each track instantly recognizable, not to mention listenable. In fact, I've found myself returning to the sugary (but not too sugary) songs of Freescha far more than my copy of Geogaddi. There's something distinctly "analog" about the proceedings from the pulpit here, creating a warm, summery feel that is hard to beat--let alone get out of your head.

If you could somehow break down music into mixable liquids, I would say that Freescha is something like a martini with equal parts Beach Boys-Californitronica and Boards of Canada childlike simplicity (perhaps with a little BBC Radiophonic Workshop or Kraftwerk olive at the bottom of the glass). This makes for an intoxicating record, and hangover free! Amen.

Available from Shingle Street records (who have no website), but you can get it through Freescha's site or Darla. Move quick, because this one's limited to 500 copies--something tells me in future days wackos on eBay will be shelling out their IDM-burnt allowances for it.

since July 15, 2003