3 out of 5

Label: Un Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi

Produced by: Dimitri Manos

I have told this exact story regarding releases on label Un Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi, but here we go again: I read the promotional blurb (“Amateur planetarium music, slacker techno, and alternative
atmospherics”) and suppress a little eye-roll; I put on the album, and get a little restless with how what I’m hearing exactly matches whatever my suppressed eye-roll was translating: here, ‘Alien’ has longform, church-like synths with vocoder singing – a blissed out, retro sound that veers a bit too hippy for me. “Oh boy,” thinks I, forgetting the previous instances where I’ve had this same thought, “this is not for me.”

…And then the rest of the album turns out to not only be very much for me, but also helps to recontextualize what I first heard and become something I also enjoy.

“Alien” is apropos amongst American Monoxide’s (Dimitri Manos and friends) collection of homebrewed ‘atmospherics’: the processed vocals are, perhaps, the source of the title, as set against a blissed-out hymnal – it is both open-endedly contemplative and illustrative. The blurb on bandcamp (the physical being a cassette release, the general fidelity of which I feel adds to the earthiness of the album) further describes Manos’ compositions as “personal like a journaling,” and I absolutely agree with that. It’s an excellent approach to listening, imaging each track as daily entries of thoughts and feelings that grab Dimitri; at the same time, as you might imagine, that can lead to these incredibly florid expressions of all varieties – the vaguely pastoral Bog Bodies; the ancient French pop of OFF Speaker ON – but they are also equally fleeting in some ways, replaced by the next thought. The intimate, analog home recording and paced crawl unites the tunes, making them clearly of one mind, but they are nonetheless individual illustrations of moments in a life, and even at 3 or 4-minute runtimes, it can feel like we’re only getting snapshots of those moments, and not the full story.

That’s ultimately what defined my rating: I can’t say I was necessarily moved by the music. But, man, was I no longer rolling my eyes in any way: these are lovely, thoughtful captures, and especially impressive in how far ranging but sonically linked they are.