Wayne B - Night of the Hunter

.....A future film noir vibe permeates this solo album by Calla drummer/sample gatherer Wayne B. Magruder. A dark ambiance that’s half music half weather pattern blankets the sound. The atmosphere is much damper and expansive than Calla’s sometimes arid, hermetic work. Rather than choosing purely rhythmic bases for his pieces, Magruder gives special attention to the texture of tracks. Enlisting the vocal talents of not one but two torch singers, (Jana Plewa of Kat Cosm and Daphne Gannon of Mercova) songs like “Souvenir” and “Oak (in the Small Hours)” reshape and update the slow burn electro-jazz of Morcheeba and Remote Viewers with a skeletal twist. The action in the instrumental tracks is filled with off-screen tapping and heartbeat pulses all pulled together by warm acoustic guitar and crickety electronics. Details shift and mild unease makes moments flicker from placid to purple and back again. This is music for slowly drawn back curtains and half-ajar cellar doors. It is sultry and suggestive; teasing but never fully revealing.

(Quatermass)