There is a whole subgenre of latter-day trip-hop that melds the kind of reflective moodiness perpetrated by Ennio Morricone in classic movie scores and the loop-focused efforts of bedroom beatmakers. The situation, the correlation, between Morricone’s music and studio beats may be the result of a simple conflation in the public imagination, since both Morricone’s work and dub music, a key part of trip-hop’s origin, have the meldodica as one of their constituent parts. And, of course, both traffic in somber melodrama. Still, there’s no melodica in “New World,” one of the keeper tracks on Frenic‘s recent EP, Lessons from the Past (MP3), and yet it takes little more than a whistle and a tersely looped guitar to suggest a Morricone remix at work.
Get the full EP, seven tracks in all, for free download at dustedwax.org. It is the 100th release from the excellent netlabel (just as yesterday’s entry was the 100th entry for the Resting Bell netlabel). More on Frenic, aka Sam Fergusson of Bristol in Britain, at soundcloud.com/frenic.