Ulla & Ultrafog: it means a lot LP

Not quite as smoky and diaphanous as Ultrafog's 'How Those Fires Burned That Are No Longer' and nowhere near as jazzy as Ulla's quietly complex 'Foam', 'it means a lot' stakes out new territory for both artists, furrowing out a mid-point between luscious dream pop and affecting, anaesthetised ambient gear. Prick up your ears and you'll spot curvaceous silhouettes of earworm-y "proper" songs - the kind of sugar-spun, nostalgic silk that Lee Gamble magicked into a robotic illusion on last year's brilliant 'Models'. But Ulla and Ultrafog don't seem to be interested in gesturing at the artificial, their reductionist approach is achingly human. Each track here is assembled from humble ingredients: saturated electric guitar riffs; snatched, almost wordless vocals; and sultry bass. Between them, the two chip away at each song’s internal logic, looping discrete fragments into hypnotising, withdrawn phrases and interrupting the flow with subtle, smeary processes.

If Oval and Microstoria wondered what technological failure might sound like if it was fashioned into "proper" arrangemets, Ulla and Ultrafog work in reverse, cracking into their serene ballads with a digital toolset, augmenting them with stutters and glitches and reducing them to their most ephemeral component parts. There's almost nothing left of 'dumb rain', a shower of loose, mutated piano-like twinkles, angelic voices and fragile strums that resonate into negative space. The duo are careful to pace their compositions mindfully, letting the rhythm and the emptiness give weight to the glittering fragments. Our minds fill in the gaps, connecting each bendable riff and incomplete phrase into a phantasmagoric chorus that's as gauzy and forlorn as Richard Chartier's campy, luscious Pinkcourtesyphone material. Similarly, 'room core' interrupts tremolo-curved cracks of Cocteau Twins-esque pink light with strangulated coos,bass plucks and rusted synths, pacing everything with stretches of near silence that are as open and eerie as anything from Deathprod's 'Treetop Drive'.

There's a heartbeat pulse on 'sad bowl' that underpins the duo's instrumental vapours, and although drums aren't a core component of 'it means a lot', when they do appear, they feel like a subdued earthquake, locking their wisps to a traceable rumble. The thick, booming sub bass on 'lame mart' offers a similar anchor, billowing through Ulla and Ultrafog's net of voices and buzzing electronics. These tremors casually link back to Alva Noto's glassy, stark minimalism, but this music isn't self-consciously minimalist - the two producers fill pregnant pauses with inquisitive emotion, letting us wonder what the dislocated words might actually mean. The album simmers listlessly until it boils over on the final track 'jesses car', lifting tranquillising, 4AD-style chorus pedalled guitars into the foreground and tying them up with the most sublime electronic knots.

Simply gorgeous, heartfelt music - a secluded, deftly intimate echo of pop's most quietly shimmering facets.