Idyllic

organic pastoral electronic music

From the shale-lined shores of Lake Superior, this is music written for the moments just before dark when there is only enough light to see silhouettes. It gets called "organic electronic music" or "folksy electronica" or, more frequently, "electronic pastoral." Stephen McAlister and James Nye employ the hypnotic chord progressions, childlike melodies and ethereal textures that mark bands like Boards of Canada and Four Tet. Music in which shifts in synthesized sonic texture and coloration do the work of imagistic lyrics, suggesting place, narrative, meaning. Clearly influenced by the pioneering sounds of The Orb and Brian Eno, Idyllic evokes a 21st-century pastoral, a sense of the temporal and spatial collapse of the distance between city and countryside. This is for the smaller moments.