Too

Audio Mixer: Klara Lewis.
On her second album of grayscale ambient productions for Editions Mego, Klara Lewis continues to lurk from the corner instead of opting for the easy kill. As with Ett, released two years earlier, Too incorporates heavily processed and sculpted samples that evoke placid menace. These tracks are a little more defined and less open-ended, despite continued evasion of the brainpan-scouring qualities -- jackhammering bass drums, piercing high end, distant vocal shrieks, and the like -- used by scores of Lewis' contemporaries. Most tracks involve a measured escalation in tension without release through industrial-sounding streaks of drones, low-end thrums, ricocheting percussion, and slow-motion backmasking, yet only "Twist," with its decayed alarm-like surges in noise, sounds violent. On the opposite end, the finale is a kind of vaporized dream pop ballad that grounds to a halt, gently erupts back into action, and verges on romantic. ~ Andy Kellman