Princ€ss: s/t LP

Bit of a special one this; described as an avant-pop supergroup involving “serious legends”, Princ€ss land a strong debut album of modified shoegaze x ambient chamber musick slotted somewhere between Hysterical Love Project, Kevin Shields, A.R. Kane and Astrid Sonne, and tipped if yr on the spectrum between any of those trip/dream-pop integers. OK what’s the craic here, then? As far as we can tell, Princ€ss are somehow related to shadowy label wherethetimegoes and wish to keep their identities lowkey, a thing that’s quite obviously gonna only encourage speculation. Their self-titled first album is a delicacy evidently crafted by artists who know their way around a song, and likewise happy to mess with the form, deploying perfectly half-cut structures with a gauze of illusive woo that keeps everything ideally out-of-reach, and everyone guessing in the spaces between. The effect is as palpable yet intangible as a shifting barometric pressure front on the mind, leaving you light-headed as the music proceeds to hit levels of weirdo sensuality. Perhaps best described as waking dream-like, Princ€ss have us hanging by a silvery thread for the duration. They instantly pull us in with the fluttering electronic thrash and soured fiddle in a keening instrumental lament ‘Crying’, setting up a run of songs, proper, with something like Salem meets Hysterical Love Project in the slackened slowcore genius ‘Point of View’, and the scalp-tingling dematerialisation of languid guitar sublimated to pure, thizzing vapours with canniest compression trickery. It all beautifully unravels from there, with a gorgeous chamber piece for cello, harp and electronics ‘Hoist Point’ leading to the serotonin-scrape iridescence of ’Shining Star’ into the emo succour of ‘In My Head’, the pigbaby-like blooz of ‘Last’ and a stunning bit of wild flute abundance on ‘In The Morning’, reminding us of Peter Gabriel and Laurie Anderson’s ‘Excellent Birds’, as if produced by Vegyn. A perfect soundtrack to crawling out of hibernation for spring, consider us fully hooked.