Sleeping with Jasmina Maschina Or I Think I'm Over Something, and Then It Turns Out I'm Totally Not

This happens too frequently. I thought I was over woozey, lo-fi-ish, bedroom neo-folk with intentionally hollow, distant vocals and sparkles of piano and other miscellaneous, blinking star-percussion, and then I hear Berlin-based multimedia composer Jasmina Maschina. I suppose I do still have albums by Tara Jane O'Neil, Jana Hunter and Mazzy Star.

Jasmina's second full-length album Alphabet Dream Noise (Staubgold, 2011) is stunningly well-crafted and one of the most balanced albums I've ever heard for its style. Never does the album suffer from the repetitive platitude of so many similar records; whereas they meander aimlessly, seemingly unsure of their courses, every detail on Alphabet Dream Noise is delicately and deliberately applied with acute precision and in ways that never shake listeners from the lull the album induces. Even the static and crackling sounds of looping electronics on "Invisible Rays," for example, flicker like an indolent flame as a candle burns to its end.

Jasmina's electronic proclivities appear elsewhere on Alphabet Dream Noise, strewn throughout the album in however limited doses, often appearing only as hypnotic background whirrs or a song's pulse; hear "Community," a drifter that makes listeners feel like they are submerged under waters so deep, the surface eclipsed by the black and blue abyss, that all notions of direction dissolve along with consciousness completely. Jasmina's capacity to conjure such a sublimating effect seems entirely natural when one keeps in mind (or discovers) that she also forms half of experimental electronic duo Minit.

Despite Alphabet Dream Noise's electronic overtone, the album is not a cold, alienating experience. Jasmina paints her ambient canvases with dabs and dribbles of intricate finger-picked acoustic notes and electric guitars that never get lost in her subtlety, her notes woven into gloaming melodies as her fingers slide audibly up and down the fretboard, imprinting her human touch.

It's strange how I always seem to stumble upon albums like Alphabet Dream Noise at the most appropriate hours for listening to them: midnight and beyond, when albums like this come alive like hypnotic nocturnal creatures. And then I end up looping them until it's time for both me and the albums to go to sleep.

For individual links to most of the tracks on Alphabet Dream Noise, visit Jasmina Maschina's Bandcamp page.