Chill and relaxing
In a double album that clocks in at nearly 90 minutes, The Lapse of the Exchange/Alone Moving Often is a diverse collection of tracks that, while not necessarily containing and upholding a unifying theme, is tightly held together by a downtempo-laced glue that takes listeners on a relaxing journey.
For Reto A Ichi, which is now one of the many names for producer Scott Heron, this double album serves as a detour from his normal serving of glitch hop tracks, most recently seen with his most recent album under the Prefuse 73 name: Sacrifices. Instead of deconstructing hip-hop and creating impactful, punchy music, this double album is much more reserved, nuanced and serene than his previous works.
“Zato Lullaby Pt. 2” has soothing, almost chime-like instrumentation that shows how far away this album is musically when compared to Heron’s other works. Crisp and smooth in all of the right places, it is representative of what this double-album embodies at its artistic peak. In a similar vein, “Tuesday Always Awful” features Eno-like piano that graces slow and long distortions that makes the song more powerful and deviates from Eno, showcasing more of Heron and his talent.
While other tracks such as “The World According to West 50th Pt. 1” go on for longer than what they should go on for and their excessive length causes tracks to become grating, more modest tracks like “Duration Meditation” are able to properly hit the sweet spot in the mix of glitchy and soothing. Its harsh qualities translate well and manage to effortlessly play out from a Residents-esque track that was cut from the same cloth to more downtempo and relaxed vibes that dominated the first of the two albums.
However, this project still features bits and traces of Heron’s other work sprinkled throughout some of the tracks. Of all the tracks on this album that see less of Reto A Ichi and more of Prefuse 73, “Noise Counter Melody” easily takes the crown for the most “glitchy” of the 26 tracks, albeit too glitchy for the rest of the album, disrupting the flow of the album as a result. “Ghost Arpeggio,” the project closer, is able to incorporate these glitches much better than “Noise Counter Melody,” in part because of the fact it doesn’t make it the main feature of the song.
As a whole, the album itself is not a difficult listen. For an album that clocks in at almost an hour-and-a-half, there is no specific point in the album where any of the tracks lull and drags on, which is impressive in this day and age with how many artists across all genres release behemoths for streaming purposes. There are some false-endings in several songs that might get a bit repetitive as time goes on, but are thankfully kept to a minimum and don’t create any contempt towards the album.
Why?
Because it’s serene. It’s meant to relax listeners. It’s an album for a cold night on a quiet street in a city you don’t know. That’s okay because Reto A Ichi comforts and provides solace in what might be a dark and turbulent world.
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