Disquiet

There’s a voice buried deep in “Jeka” by the group Port-Royal. Perhaps your hearing is better than average, but the spoken material is barely audible on first listen, appearing just out of range, lost in an aquatic murk that suggests both Gavin Bryars’ Sinking of the Titanic and Scanner’s early work, back when he was still scanning the airwaves for loose talk. Over repeated listens, the voice reveals itself as likely voices, perhaps Russian, and the four-minute “Jeka” reveals itself to be largely a construct of reverberant guitars, amorphous sounds that become a set of evident patterns. But just ’cause you can trace the haze’s contours doesn’t mean you know what’s buried deep inside. The highly recommended “Jeka” (MP3) is the first track off Port-Royal’s Flares, released late last month on Resonant, and its available for download from the label’s website, resonantlabel.com.

By Marc Weidenbaum