The One AM Radio premieres Dntel remix, releases first album in four years
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The combination of the One AM Radio and Dntel seems almost preordained. Both One AM’s Hrishikesh Hirway and Jimmy Tamborello, a.k.a. Dntel, have been making fragile, folk-tinted electronic music for years, with the latter practically inventing the sub-genre on 2003’s ‘Such Great Heights’ by the Postal Service, Tamborello’s project with Ben Gibbard.
Indeed, the One AM Radio chose an appropriate name, occupying the surreal space between sentience and sleep. The Yale-educated Hirway’s music boasts a dreamlike quality common to both insomniacs and those under the influence. The sort of hypnotic Romanticism that drives one to name albums ‘Heaven is Attached by a Slender Thread’ or songs ‘An Old Photo of Your New Lover’ (the Tamborello-remixed tune Pop & Hiss is premiering today).
Predictably, the new record was recorded under largely sleepless conditions. Originally intended to be a dance album, Hirway’s rough demos wound up in the hands of Tony Hoffer, who has produced for Beck, Belle & Sebastian, Air and Phoenix. Working with Hirway as a close advisor and mixer, Hoffer’s pop touch helped offset Hirway’s steel-gray gloom. The record also includes contributions on a pair of songs from Anticon electronic wunderkind Baths.
Released on Dangerbird Records earlier this month, ‘Heaven’ also features a constellation of well-known remixers, including Prefuse 73, Baths and Saint Ettiene. Yet Dntel’s feels particularly appropriate, offering the union of two like-minded artists to create something memorable. Hirway’s sotto voce vocals are buoyed by off-beat percussion, phosphorescent synthesizers, and sliced vocal samples that seem to propel it forward. The sort of song best heard before dawn or after dark -- witching hour pop.
Download: (Pop & Hiss Premiere)
MP3: The One AM Radio, ‘An Old Photo of Your New Lover (Dntel Remix)’
-- Jeff Weiss