Quarantine [CD]

Since 2010's King Felix and into last year's highly lauded Hour Logic, Laurel Halo has developed a self-contained take on electronic music, collapsing the boundaries between ambient, pop, synthetic psychedelia, dub and the techno music of her Midwest roots. Fixed stylistic territories fold in on themselves, time quickens--her music is meant for transit, body listening and loud soundsystems. Quarantine, her debut album and first release on Hyperdub, is her most focused and evolved recording yet. This is an album of transporting songs, various altitude shifts via effecting pop-concrete, built on a rich synthesis of intuitive but exacting electronic abstraction, bass pulse and heartfelt songwriting. Like her previous releases, Quarantine slams ambient suspension and disorienting detail up against each other. The 12 songs here operate as complex vacuums, airborne harmony and movement met with inci-dental noise and sub bass pressure, sample details and synth lines as trails across a mutilated sonic topography.