Detroit electronic duo South South Million release their first album in 6 years much of which was created using sounds from YouTube, old cassettes and trashed records. If 2012’s breezier “Wind Hand Caught in the Door” played like fractalized (sample-ized?) Beach Boys pop, “Ain’t Lines” embraces their love for GAS, Seefeel and Holger Czukay. Quiet beats play under symphonic atmospheres—while the duo, who sometimes sing—stay quiet. What does “Ain’t Lines” mean? Maybe it’s a record about finding congruence in all of the nonsense? Each of the songs culling from a library of disparate sources and genres to make something that sounds... linear? And the cassette version, as a medium, fits these songs so well. Like a long-lost soundtrack, played on a dusty deck, just as the sun peaks over the horizon. Orange and blue.
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it’s a little more abstract, definitely darker, and more urban, but still melodic, gorgeous and purposefully constructed
It’s hard to tell what’s sampled and what’s not: ocean waves via scratchy sound effects LPs crash over gorgeous string arrangements, cut-up ’70s soul and ’80s dub warble between the left and right channels, saxophone wafts by on the breeze… Chill but not chillwave…
South South Million’s blissful collage of ambient electronics, found-sound samples and looping melodies… is a transporting set, composed with a rich, adventurous palette