4 out of 5

Label: Nomark Records

Produced by: Amon Tobin

A companion album to the purposeful tonal redirect of Fear in a Handful of Dust, the copy for Long Stories interjects its music – if read literally – into the relative middle of that album. Of course, that’s probably not meant literally, but it works either way: whereas Fear’s name conjured a macro- and micro- sense of obsessiveness, Long Stories is dually a living, and yet static thing, and also a symbol of comfort. It can exist anywhere; between; or everywhere. Including in the middle of Fear, like hitting pause at the halfway mark to just, like, sit and think.

Composed primarily on one instrument, Long Stories’ blessing and slightest hitch is its consistency: ISAM brought about a synthesis of digital means producing organic noises, and this album revels exclusively in the most tempered version of that – breathing steadily; exhaling beautiful static. Percussion makes some appearances, but only as parts of the organism. This is an album that never flinches, but, thanks to this most unique balance that really only Tobin has achieved to this extent (and explored in different ways on following releases), Long Stories is never overwhelming or boring; it is conversation.

…In which we sometimes repeat ourselves. Fittingly, the album mimics its sister’s flaw of sometimes seeming to exist in a vacuum. While the absorbing consistency is an extreme plus, it maybe also exposes that the album hits no real highs or lows, and cycles through some similar sounds / ideas on several tracks (particularly on the A-side), if expertly rearranged. On the one hand, this goes with the “comfort” of the sound, but it also makes one wish Tobin had pushed out of the middle here and there, to allow this Long Stories organism to truly roam free.