Lotus Plaza - The Floodlight Collective (Black Vinyl)

Further reinforcing the notion that Deehunter have an unreasonable reserve of talent among their ranks, guitarist and songwriter Lockett Pundt branches out on his own, following in the footsteps of singer Bradford Cox and his Atlas Sound material. There are certain sonic hallmarks the three different projects have in common: cavernous echo-drenched production, smeared out vocals and endlessly textured instrumentation, but Lotus Plaza seems more in touch with the lineage of pop music than either Deerhunter or Atlas Sound. There's a tangible Motown feel to 'Quicksand', kicking off with drums lifted straight from a Supremes track before the Kevin Shields guitars muscle their way into the mix, barely concealing a surf rock influence. There's an awful lot cramed into a punchy four minutes worth of song. Next comes the glorious 'These Years', a marvellous piece of slow motion enchantment that's barely more than a beautiful blur to the ears. Only the crystalline jangle of electronically manipulated percussion prevents the track from gliding off into the ether. Tellingly, a rare moment of vocal clarity arrives on 'Different Mirrors' - chiefly because Pundt passes the mic to his aforementioned cohort Bradford Cox. The song is a soaring triumph, employing a beat that wouldn't be out of place on an early Joy Division production, whilst charging up that oceanic, spine-tingling rush of sound Deerhunter honed between last year's Microcastle and Weird Era Cont. More greatness abounds on the wonderfully wayward 'What Grows?', a song that buries timeless melodicism beneath a swirl of studio-based obfuscation. The sort of reverberant, filtered sound here is like a more guitar-based, rock-oriented version of Panda Bear or Grouper's output, and it makes for a captivating, deeply enigmatic album's worth of leftfield pop and sonic imagination.