What’s No Longer There

Lotus Plaza “A Threaded Needle”

The Lotus Plaza album comes out in stores next week, but I’ve had a copy for months now. I’m not saying this to brag — in this era of leaked records, who could possibly care? — but to explain that I’ve been living with this music for a while now, to the point that I’ve already got nostalgic memories attached to the songs. The cd arrived in the mail on a snow day, and not long after, I remember walking around in Brooklyn at night in late December. It wasn’t quite a blizzard, but it snowing, windy, and bitter cold. My vision was blurred, everything seemed slow, and I felt perfectly in synch with the general vibe of Lockett Pundt’s solo tunes. Maybe he wasn’t going for snow per se, but I’m sure he had some form of disorientation in mind when he wrote this material.

Lotus Plaza isn’t a far cry from what Lockett does in Deerhunter, but the balance of hookiness and haziness is adjusted much more in favor of the latter. His best compositions foreground a particular bit of instrumental melody and texture while the rest of the track blurs out, sorta like a musical version of rack focus. The effect is a bit like trying to remember something, but only being able to fully recall seemingly minor details and sensations with any sort of vividness. It seems right that this music would end up associated with exactly this sort of memory in my mind — I can perfectly visualize glimpses of particular street corners as seen through wet glasses, but I kinda struggle to recall much more of the context.

Buy it from Amazon.