THRUPENCE
Ideas Of Aesthetics (Future Classics)
The variety of styles on the debut album from Melbourne composer/producer Jack Vanzet may speak to the lengthy gestation of this record, given the first Thrupence release was in 2011.
Ideas Of Aesthetics opens with Forest On The Sun’s grand synth-strings and tinkling piano that morphs into a thickened Euro ambient soundtrack. It closes with the light barrio groove of Acacia Road, which jauntily adds flute to really seal the early ‘70s outer boroughs feel.
And in the middle there’s Conversations where Vanzet’s brother Edward floats dreamily in a Beatles-take-acid melody as crisp drums cut in on blurry electronics.
Or the variety may say more about the wide-ranging mind of Vanzet who seems like a natural outgrowth of the Future Classics free range farm, which houses the likes of Flume, Wafia, Flight Facilities, Jagwar Mar and Nick Murphy.
It’s not in consequential that he has a background in visual art - he was responsible for the cover of the Rufus album Bloom as well as his own records naturally (look up the cover for 2012’s single Voyages) – as a companion to his sound explorations and writing.
The barrier-demolishing Future Classics is exactly where the gentle piano ruminations of Honesty and Wait, with their echoes of pianist Sophie Hutchings (who is a superior melodicist but doesn’t really venture into electronics), can happily co-exist with the spacey drift of Alethea, Edward Vanzet back with lightly fuzzed vocals, which feels like a companion piece to something from Pond if they’d been produced by Flume.
Then there’s the summer sunset electro pop of Atmos, where Vanzet and vocalist Wafia do that Rufus thing of easily moving forward without ever seeming to push, at the opposite end of the record to the busier, percussive Rinse Repeat which is all twitch and response.
Watching Vanzet move between “song” and “sound” tracks – both composed of course, but one focused more on your standard tune/hook structures – with equal comfort makes it clear there’s no need for him to narrow his approach any time soon.
And if anyone’s thinking of a remix of Atmos, send it on: that could be fun.