Oceania At Juno Download

Review: Ambient and highly textured soundscapes from somewhere in the futuristic past (bear with us on this one), tape hiss and warped piano reacts with pinpoint percussion and precise production in this, Oceania's second EP. It's a weird one. Starting track "Black" features the beguiling silken vocals of "N" drifting over layer after layer of experimental sounds. Clicks and bass bumps loom and lunge out of the gloom with an uneasy clarity, and this off-kilter effect continues throughout the release. "Cloth" and "Strange People" follow suit with a harder-edged techno bounce, but it's in the tracks featuring the mysterious "N" that their experimental edge really shines through, as in "Streets". As visual as production gets, this is not a set builder but a crystalline piece of standalone work; difficult but well worth the challenge.