CS + Kreme - The Butterfly Drinks The Tears Of The Tortoise

As is their way, CS + Kreme return with a surprise new LP that arrives with little fanfare but is charged with their by now characteristic ambition and purposeful experimentation. Butterfly Drinks the Tears of the Tortoise makes up the third in a trilogy of LPs that have successively pushed the CS+K sound into deeper psychedelic realms. Listeners of their regular NTS show will not be surprised, the impulses towards the outre and avant-minded showcased there now increasingly evident in their own music, which is not so much genre-agnostic as beholden to their own particular vision. At this stage, I'm not really sure how best to describe CS+Kreme other than in relation to their own music and Butterfly... certainly makes most sense in the context of the duo's overall oeuvre. As a standalone, it's a relatively singular statement; alongside the other two, you're talking about the forging of a very distinct sonic universe where anything is possible and everything is up for grabs.  There's also clearly a love for the sounds of the in-between spaces of club culture being projected here - and these guys are on Trilogy Tapes for a reason - and you might even describe tracks like 'Dome Mosaic' or 'Master of Disguise' as IDM (either in the mould of Aphex, or the mould of Boards...), though elsewhere you can certainly hear traces of a proggy, DIY minded sensibility that speaks to their former-lives in 'bands'. Once you might have called this post-rock - like how Gastr Del Sol are - and technically that's probably right: this is what should happen after rock, when you've reached all logical conclusions and the illogical becomes the next obvious step. How else best to understand such fluid combinations of spiritual jazz, psychedelia, folk, fourth world, electronic and ethnographic musics and so forth (and look at that FFO list below for evidence of how wide-ranging they are)? And therein lies the answer: why understand when you can instead feel your way, in pursuit of an instinct. CS + Kreme have many strengths, but that's probably their best.