3 out of 5

Label: Hungarian

Produced by: Laddio Bolocko

The EP-iest of EPs, Laddio Bolocko’s last main release before its members dispersed onto other projects sticks to a middleground of Don Cab II style pricklyness, Yowie-esque drone rock, and ambience, but done up in an offhand way that its title suggests. Which doesn’t make it bad at all, just distracted: shuffling through ideas in pretty short order and only really settling for something more fleshed out on one track: the penultimate, ironically named ‘The Outro,’ which I think actually manages a legit riff.

LB’s debut weirded me out by acting as a bridge between a lot of styles of instrumental post-rock, without it coming across as a hodgepodge; As If By Remote carries the same sense of purpose, though, again, the purpose seemed to be to sound noncommmital. The title track kicks off with some heavy beats and guitar before some interstitial ambience transitions to the faded background saunter of Karl, then The Outro, then A Passing State Of Well-Being is a kind of loping lumber of bass, guitar, and drums that sounds like the band warming up to pass the baton to another song… that never comes.

EPs can be the dumping grounds for extra ideas, sometimes centered around That One Great Track that just didn’t fit the vibe of an album. As If By Remote doesn’t feel exactly like either of these – extra ideas; nor does it have one especially memorable track necessarily – but it does feel like the perfect “between” release that, fitting for the band’s fixture in post-rock history, ended up not being between anything after all.

If you own other LB releases, this is a good warm-up for the band’s more challenging / engaging material, but if you were getting this stuff chronologically, it would have felt a bit wanting at the time.