Double LP
Orange, the follow up to CS + Kreme's year-beating Snoopy from 2020, was released rather unceremoniously in digital-only formats back in November of last year, with no word to the shops as to when a record might land, which is pretty frustrating given the popularity of that previous LP. People had questions. Nearly five months on, here's the record and their answer. Most interested in Orange might now already be well familiar with it, though, and i say this with great credit, i think the passage of time has been very generous to a collection of songs not as immediate as their predecessors but that grow in intrigue over repeated listens. Crepuscular, half abstracted, half hypnotic experimental electronics have long been CS + Kreme's MO, though on Orange they appear to have moved ever deeper into the dark shadows of the night. And it's a specific kind of nighttime, too, one located somewhere between Berlin and Cologne circa the end of the century, a rhizomatic blistering of Tarwater/To Rococo Rot midnight elegance, early A-Musik skittishness (F.X Randomiz, Microstoria++), and a jazz-y smokiness. It's as richer palette as ever from which they concoct this dubby, psychic brew, layer-on-layer of off-centre percussion, creeping bass and guitar lines, arching strings, eerie woodwind (is that oboe? or just flute?) and those characteristic vocal incantations (also joined here by Bridget St. John, remarkably enough). It's a clear evolution from Snoopy, more 'texture' than 'song', so to speak, finding some precedent in the (increasingly distant) past but ever-searching in trying to map its own terrain. Yes, we had to wait for it, but i find myself enjoying it more now than on first listen. It's almost as if they planned it that way. One step ahead as always i guess...
