Kyle Landstra moved from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest, two places I’ve never been, so I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other. I imagine they’re pretty different. As of this writing, Chicago is experiencing temperatures that are colder than those found in the Antarctic! As it happens, my brother is in Chicago for this polar blast; I had to warn him not to go outside or he’d get frostbite after five minutes. (He heeded my warning and scrapped a run he was planning to take.)
None of this has any bearing on Bloom Lake (Unifactor), Landstra’s first recording in his new environs. “Love in a Mist” is a rendition of optimism across fifteen minutes of improvised synthesizer, as if the distance traveled and the life upheaved were worth the effort. “Bloom Lake” on the B-side drifts contemplatively as that new environment is taken in, mulled over, examined closely, and found to be satisfactory in the end.
All told, the move seems to have been a good one for Landstra.
And not a moment too soon, it turns out, with that whole Chicago-is-the-coldest-place-on-the-planet thing.
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