Forging ever bolder and emotive paths through electronic music, Plaid are set to release their 10th studio album ‘Polymer’ on June 7th via Warp Records. The album’s 13 tracks cover energetic bangers, bright melodic visceral rhythms and hypnotic wombic textures to create perhaps their most cohesive, direct album to date.
The innovative duo Ed Handley and Andy Turner have been expanding the realm of electronic music as Plaid since they diverged from trio The Black Dog in the early 90s. In 2019, Plaid stand alongside the likes of Aphex Twin, Autechre and Nightmares on Wax as mainstays of the Warp label as it reaches its 30th anniversary, celebrating achievements in music like few others. Their adventurous and playful approach has taken them to working with Björk and drawing comparisons to fellow collaborators Mark Bell, Arca, Haxan Cloak and more recent releases by Skee Mask and Daniel Avery. They’ve worked with the London Sinfonietta, the Southbank Gamelan Players, composed for Felix’s Machines robotic sculptures, and soundtracked events as diverse as reindeer migration in northern Europe to a level in popular platformer Little Big Planet 3. In a live capacity their show straddles both a contemporary and club capacity, able to pack venues from Sydney Opera House and Southbank to Bloc and Berghain.
Plaid's tenth studio album is inspired by environmental concerns, as well as humanity's relationship with synthetic objects and how they affect the planet. Similar to many of Plaid's past albums, the duo weave acoustic instrumentation throughout their tricky compositions, fusing machine precision with warmth, humanity, and wonder. As with 2016's The Digging Remedy, Polymer is a bit darker than usual for Plaid, reflecting the album's eco-conscious themes, but it's still playful and spirited, if more mature-sounding than their earlier work. That said, the album also contains some of their most danceable material in ages. Opener "Meds Fade" features fizzling, aggressive synth textures over a steady, striding electro thump out of the Ed Banger school. The clanging rhythms of "Maru" sound like a warped variation on the sound of experimental club labels like Timedance, yet the serene organ pads and twinkling melodies add a gentle touch. "Drowned Sea" sounds more like a lab experiment, with a post-industrial rhythmic pattern ricocheting back and forth, yet the atmosphere is completely transformed with the addition of twinkling melodies near the track's end. "The Pale Moth" incorporates acoustic guitar pluckings and intricate horn arrangements, and an echoing noise which nearly sounds like a dog barking. The giddy "Dancers" spirals upward towards a sort of euphoria, while the violent, disruptive "Recall" signals systematic malfunction. "Crown Shy" manages to work some rollicking accordion into its stuttering beats and hopeful melodies, and "Praze" ends the album with a gentle, pastoral frolic. Polymer is one of Plaid's most successful hybrids of organic and artificial sounds, matching its ambitious themes and concepts with enlightening music.
| A1 | Meds Fade | 3:15 |
| A2 | Los | 4:50 |
| A3 | Maru | 4:50 |
| B1 | Ops | 4:17 |
| B2 | Drowned Sea | 4:48 |
| B3 | The Pale Moth | 4:53 |
| C1 | Dancers | 5:00 |
| C2 | Nurula | 4:01 |
| C3 | Recall | 3:12 |
| D1 | All To Get Her | 3:13 |
| D2 | Dust | 2:22 |
| D3 | Crown Shy | 3:51 |
| D4 | Praze | 3:57 |
