The video for Home”s first single – insofar as a mainly-instrumental electronic album can have a single – was released in late November and features a combination of projection and live dancers. The dancers movements trigger a slew of geometric shapes, fragmenting into patterns that are both abstract and familiar: fireworks, or faces, or coordinated movement. This is what listening to Nosaj Thing is like: a mix of the arcane, the precise, and the completely human.
Chung’s first record – 2009′s much-heralded Drift – established him as a master of details. The perfectly-sculpted drums and mellifluous pads of Drift return on Home, and the young producer’s knack for creating worlds out of a few disparate elements has only grown stronger. Chung’s formula is tried and true, and even though the skittering-percussion-over-delicately-filtered-synthesizers trick shows up on every track it seems pointless to care. It never gets old.
Though hazy half-tempo hip-hop is all the rage these days, Chung’s liberal use of reverb and syncopated delays is intriguing rather than rote. “Tell” is airy, glitchy electronica; “Safe” is all fuzzy vibraphones and snapping hi-hats. Chung’s hip-hop teeth come out on “Snap”; “Try,” featuring the haunting and barren vocal work of Toro y Moi, seems to linger in the air for a long time. When a beautifully-played electric guitar surfaces on “Eclipse/Blue” surfaces it feels like dawn in Antarctica.
Still though Home is all evocative – yet delicate – surfaces; hundreds of planes connected in a breathing web. Every sixteen bars the listener arrives at another breathtaking (if spare) vista. Sit back and enjoy the view.
Bars: 5/5
Nosaj Thing – Safe
03 Safe
Nosaj thing – Snap
07 Snap
Nosaj Thing – Phase III
10 Phase III
Nosaj Thing – Try feat. Toro y Moi
09 Try feat. Toro y Moi