The keeper on Matthew Stenning‘s new EP, The UV EP as he calls it — his music pseudonym being UV — has a clear-cut keeper. There’s much to recommend the collection of seven songs, but it’s the track “Burn” (MP3) that’ll have listeners taking notice. That is, once they notice it, because it’s such a gentle stroke of a song, such a sweet confection, that it’s all the more likely to get lost amid the big beats and fanciful atmospherics that make up much of The UV EP.
“Burn” is a gentle gesture of a song, just a bit of acoustic guitar, echoing heavily, some struck-matchstick and flipped-lighter percussion (“Burn” — get it?), a little stereo play, and that’s about all he wrote. Just modest pieces that fit together ever so perfectly. While its vibe is groovy ’60s beach-side folk-pop (complete with spacey backward-masked sounds, reminiscent of early Beatles studio experiments), its metronomic pulse is totally post-hip-hop, entirely based on the premise that the music-box-like curation of these individual sound objects will hold up for three perfect minutes. And it does. There’s also a cool little locked-vinyl-groove gimmick at the end that’s just right.
Get the full set at plainaudio.com.
For the next few days, three ardent listeners will join me in discussing the new album by ambient-music figure Jon Hassell, Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street, released on the ECM Records label. Most if not all of the individual tracks being discussed are streaming at 
