4 out of 5

Label: Broken Press

Produced by: Norm Chambers

An uplifting set of sneaky electro, starting most songs off in hazy, shimmery washes of fuzzy ambience before synths and beats overwhelm for nigh-retro grooves.

Norm Chambers’ Cede is impressively flowing: actually a compilation of material recorded over a couple years and via quite varying setups, tracks were plucked to align and then mastered together, making for a proper journey, going from relatively formless to more “traditional” structures. One criticism, though, is that the overall journey is pretty short, as we pretty much kick over into the latter phase by the end of Side A, stopping off for some vaguely krautrock-like automaton beats on Patternmusik; every song thereafter arguably follows the exact same format suggested by my opening sentence.

However, just because every punk song may use the same three chords, there are still so many good punk songs, and the concept holds even truer here, with Norm playing with so many more layers than three chords that the repeated structure rather magically disappears from noticeability. I’d say only towards the end, with Fission’s rather abrupt conclusion and Endless Landscape’s comparatively simpler melody, was I clued in to the similarities, but the appropriately titled New Vision – closing things out with a swirling, positive, new age-y burble – manages to wash away and scrutiny, taking the longest runtime on the album at 7+ minutes to do the whole journey from start to finish, but giving us a nice cooldown at the end to indicate that journey’s conclusion.

The kind of minimalist electro that kicks off Cede is in line with what follows, but also is by no means indicative. Norm Chambers opens that sound up quickly and then sustains our interest throughout, but in a non-tiresome fashion that encourages revisiting and appreciating even more of the compilation’s nuances.