III

Description

After a debut self-titled album with 4AD, brothers Scott and Bryan Devendorf (The National), Ben Lanz (The National, Beirut), and multi-instrumentalist Aaron Arntz (Beirut, Grizzly Bear) are back with II, the new album from LNZNDRF. It's a massive, hypnotic force, both stormy and trance-inducing. Recorded during shamanic jams at Austin's Public Hi-Fi studio in September 2019, then later edited into shape, these songs are rooted in the present and already looking a bit towards the future. The band equipped themselves with headlamps and caving gear to descend into a somnambulistic space. A drastic cut from the album, "Ringwoodite," with its gritty, agile, and precise drumming, is a breath of fresh air. Then come the electronic "Gaskiers" and the motorik anthem "Stowaway" which, although not connected in terms of sound, work together to establish LNZNDRF as a strange krautrock creation. Their incantations seem to beckon as much to the dystopia of the present as to the Great Mystery that awaits us when we finally cross its barrier. It won't be a utopia, but it will at least be something different.