School of Seven Bells/ Disconnect From Desire

School of Seven Bells
Disconnect From Desire
(Full Time Hobby)

Today you join me on the wings of a white-feathered Goat God, where I'm currently swooping over the moon on my way to visit Queen Arizonia to beg that she free my people from the tyranny of the Bog Monsters. Another day at the Artrocker office, in other words.
As you've probably guessed, what I'm cynically getting at is that Schools of Seven Bells sound like a band who holiday in Narnia. Singer Alejandra Deheza is a self-confessed lucid dreamer, and suitably enough the New York group rest their musical identity on a bed of electro-mellowness, smoothly intertwined harmonies and borderline Celtic oneness.
Frequently this isn't a bad thing; 'Bye Bye Bye' floats along on an '80s Bowie synth riff, 'Windstorm' has a pleasingly open-air sense of liberation, while 'Babelonia' manages to balance industrial beats with tenderness.
If there's a downside it's that the melodies demand spacious production, but the shoe-gaze textures here feel trapped in an underwater lobsterpot.
Also, and to be awkwardly honest, there's a sense of imperfection and vulnerability missing from the vocals which can leave them sounding samey from song to song.
Still, I'm sure even the Buddha himself had his problems - and if you're after a record that makes you go "Om" you can’t go too far wrong with SO7B.