Keep It Slow

Album Review

Low Motion Disco practice what they preach on their debut full-length, offering 13 tracks of decidedly downtempo music — but the term "downtempo" usually suggests something with a very different flavor from what this duo has created. The program's first real track, "Born on the Low Wind," is downright pastoral, and literally so: along with the strings and quietly thumping bass drum you'll hear birdsong, wind, water, and the bleating of sheep. "Things Are Gonna Get Easier," on the other hand, is a gentle electro-reggae arrangement of the Five Stairsteps' 1970s classic "O-o-h Child," while "Frantic Low Moment" (a CD-only track) is a sort of minimalist, almost disinterested funk. Things get stranger toward the end, with "The Low Murderer Is Out at Night" (which blends acoustic guitar, glitches, and a bizarre spoken word section) and "Low Italian Déssert (Try It Out)" (which places weird noises and an Italian vocabulary exercise into a dark and dubby atmosphere), and then at the very end they get kind of bland and generic. But overall this album is a lot of good, slow-moving fun. Recommended.