- WANDA GROUP fans were spoilt last year, with a run of releases for Vlek, Further and Opal Tapes that ranked among the Brighton-based producer's finest work. Masculinity Is A Wonderful Thing shows a further refinement of his method. It follows a now-familiar format: a succession of brief sonic images are arranged in a mixtape-like manner, at times evolving with a patient logic, at others proceeding through unexpected contrasts. Compared to their predecessors though, these tracks show a heightened structural precision.
The chief protagonist in "We Held Our Balance" is the percussion: tom-tom rolls at the opening echoed, later, in a muffled drum tattoo that plays out under billows of texturing. "Gorgeous Lucio" is tied together by a shrill, recurring drone, around which are woven various pensive string chords, piano doodles and sluggish sampled speech. The result is a little like the brand of vacated easy listening last explored by The Caretaker, but Johnstone’s take on the form is more abstract. The pathos is buried deeper, too, and though it almost escapes in a moment of colour (at T minus two minutes), that piercing drone returns before too long to see us out. These tracks are as stringently minimal as anything Johnstone has produced lately, but the fleeting moments of poignancy make them worthwhile.
Tracklist A We Held Our Balance
B Gorgeous Lucio