Trees Speak - Glass

The fourth album from Arizona's Trees Speak is another exciting shift in their rapidly expanding discography, packing a wealth of ideas within its 18 tracks. With each successive release, the group have tightened their focus, reining in their more indulgent impulses and creating full-length journeys with a true sense of progression. PostHuman is their most cinematic work to date, with each track resembling a distinct movie scene, often seamlessly segued in order to maintain continuity. The band is still heavily influenced by Krautrock, but the motorik rhythms of tracks like "Glass" are creepily suspenseful as well as hypnotic. "Chamber of Frequencies" blends rippling synth arpeggios with showers of psychedelic horns, and feels torn between bliss and existential confusion. "Elements of Matter" masterfully applies spacy effects, flickering keyboards, and overdubbed drum hits to a sparse, anxious groove. While some tracks seem to offer light relief, others considerably ramp up the suspense, from the clanging, dread-filled "Scheinwelt" to the spooky, tripped-out funk of "X Zeit." Of the many highlights, "Steckdose" is a good summation of the album's charms and challenges, opening with unsteady chords and wibbling synths before launching into a driving beat, then breaking down into a slower rhythm before more fragmented synths bubble upward, providing a segue into the arpeggio-core of "Amnesia Transmitter." The vocoder-heavy, Mellotron-laced "Quantize Humanize" gives off a loungey Air vibe, leading the way to the rising strings and gasping horns of the frightful "Gläserner Mensch." The last two tracks are included as a bonus 7" along with the LP edition, and the swirling jitteriness of "Machine Vision" is one of the album's funnest moments. Wide-ranging without seeming scattered, PostHuman is an effortlessly accomplished work