Small Black - New Chain

Is chillwave an actual musical movement or just the latest hyped-up tag given to any band with synths, a laptop, a penchant for loops and a singer whose vocal flits between sounding otherworldly and a bit bored? Either way, it is showing no signs of abating. Next in a long line of chillwave artists to come out of the USA is New York quartet Small Black, who, following an acclaimed EP earlier this year, pop up with their first full length album.


Mixing the warm with the frosty and the spacious with the fuzzy, New Chain has a typically distant vibe to it. Josh Kolenik's understated vocals are backed by 80s drumbeats and synths so icy that they practically send a shiver up your spine. The album is often really hypnotic, the dizzying Hydra being a good example of this, sounding, as it does, like someone has looped part of any one of about a dozen Stone Roses songs and fused it with a science fiction soundtrack from the mid 80s. At its best, New Chain manages to be ambitious while still remaining restrained. The strongest song on the album, the atmospheric Photojournalist, is almost anthemic but for the fact that it is being desperately reigned in. Even though there is a lot going on, the song never actually bursts fully into life. Instead the result is trancelike and woozy.

New Chain is more polished than Small Black’s previous work and there are plenty of interesting moments within. There is nothing instantly memorable though, which means the album slots nicely into an ever-expanding genre rather than especially standing out.