Artifact

They say this CD was recorded between 2001 and 2004 "at home and on tour, in bedrooms, hotels, moving vehicles, parking garages...." But despite its name, this isn't an album of sketches, lost tracks, and other detritus. Instead, Artifact is a haunting document of ambient designs, trippy lounge, and cinematic atmospheres that occupy STS9's first new CD in five years. The "home" recordings are actually verité vignettes providing connecting tissue for songs like "Better Day," a haunting lament with breathy guest vocals from Audio Angel (Rashida Clendening), and the space-age lounge music of "Somesing." A band that plays as much as it programs, STS9's compositions have a natural flow and integrity, as if they were grown as much as computed. "Tokyo" is a hypnotic jam of slide guitar and electronic atmospheres lashed together on a kinetic groove sliced by dream sequence logic. Imagine the Grateful Dead going glitch on Miles Davis's Bitches Brew and you have a good sense of STS9's sound and why they've played events from the alternative festival Coachella to jam-band gatherings like Bonaroo. Artifact doesn't look back, but forward to a horizon still a few moments in the future. --John Diliberto