4 out of 5

Label: Expert Work Records

Produced by: Justin Nardy, Todd Ramsey (recorded by)

Deliciously evolved from their debut, Twenty One Trillion decide on “squiggly” as their m.o., smushing the middleground chill instrumentals from before to the fringes of that scene: restless electronics; bursts of offbeat percussion; twangs of bass. Interestingly, the duo of Justin Nardy (guitar + half of everything) and Todd Ramsey (drums + the other half of everything) decided to pare off some of the more rocking tracks from this session as an accompanying EP, but the way LP2 kind of massages ambient vibes into its nervous shuffle of noise almost makes it more aggressive overall… it’s just sneaky about it.

This is also much less cut and paste than before; the preceding album had plenty of layers, but you could feel that: you could feel the layering to a degree, and it led to some some artificiality. It’s not that LP2 is necessarily organic by comparison – part of its magic is that it avoids the jam band vibes its kind of wandering new age-y synth twinkles could easily lend themselves to – but there is more of a guiding muse at work in the compositions; it’s both very human and faceless at the same time. While that can be bad in some scenarios, it’s a music-first presentation of anonymity that works well for the group: LP2 makes you pay attention without having to be particularly loud or showy about it.

The music is this lovely microcosmic blend of 70s prog and yacht rock, cycled through 90s math rock, but I promise you it’s not nearly as obnoxiously shticky as that sounds. It takes the improvisational spirit of the former, the easy going pop of the middle reference, and then some of the biting precision of the latter. Here and there the album crosses over into somewhat softer-edged indie pop – see the starting patter of Banking Angle – and, personal preference, but I found those moments less engaging; less challenging. It’s just a sound I’ve heard before, whereas the band otherwise finds new angles into the crowded instrumental music space; but maybe less objectively critical, tracks do tend to somewhat just peter out as opposed to coming to a decisive ending. It’s kind of fitting, but the tracks do have relative peaks and valleys; it seems like it’s hard for the duo to know where to cut things off, so it arrives arbitrarily.

The digital includes a single track of… the whole album, with breaks between tracks. I’m not really sure why? But this is an excellent LP listen: the further engagement of putting the record down, and flipping it over, further brings out the music-first aspect of it: this is made to be a participatory listen. It has that effect even digital, but I’ll vote for physical-format purity on this one and say it enhances the experience.