Best Candidate for the Flagship Album of an "Original Run" Series that Doesn't Involve Supporting An Evil Corporation Award

Lindstrøm
Where You Go I Go Too
(Smalltown Supersound; 2008)

Seriously, have you tried running with this thing on headphones? Well, okay, me neither, but in my defense there’s like six feet of snow outside and my legs would probably fall off from frostbite, since this album gives such a false sense of endurance. It’s odd that in an era where krautrock and prog are referenced so heavily in dance music, few bands have the chutzpah to release 28-minute tracks like the opener here without calling it a DJ-mix and stitching together beats that vary in compatibility.

Not that Lindstrøm doesn’t have a lot of touchstones in current strains of disco and Balearic revivalism but its spirit, if not its sounds, seems closer to Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, and Ash Ra Tempel. The brightness he brings to his music is refreshing: all shimmering synths, snaking rhythms, and even (on “The Long Way Home”) archaic stuff like melodies and chord changes. And unlike Justice, who take prog tropes as kitschy one-offs, Lindstrom is in for the long haul; the album doesn’t exactly make a lot of sense, can even sound mundane and repetitive if you pick it up halfway through or only listen to sections. The heavy breathing that comes in the middle of that opening track is a good indicator of how invested Lindstrom is in the organic, shifting moods across the album as a whole. Dance music is content to run in place but Where You Go I Go Too is constantly moving forward.