How To Dress Well - Love Remains
- Written by Greg Salter
According to his recent interviews, philosophy student Tom Krell’s How To Dress Well project was never meant to get this much attention. Much of the material on Love Remains was given away as EPs for free over the course of several months at the tail end of last year, seemingly with little thought given to who might be listening, or indeed how many people might be listening. Turns out: the right people, and then a lot of people. Krell’s trajectory is a blunt example of how momentum can build behind an artist, to the point that it becomes difficult to control – an artist’s music is almost taken off their hands as soon as it enters the online parallel universe. Attempts at control have been made though – the EPs came off his blog a few months ago and have apparently been polished for an official release.
This polish is difficult to discern though – Krell constructs his tracks largely from samples and his own voice, which is stretched and layered over and over again. This can result in heavenly choruses and harmonies, but can also disintegrate into feedback, which he seems to bask in. This is the first thing that will strike you about Love Remains – how slight, lo-fi and obsessed with its own world it is. This is music clearly not originally intended for the size of audience it currently commands, which makes its popularity both odd and unsurprising (the blogosphere is, after all, constantly, determinedly on the look out for the next, undiscovered new thing).
Over time, however – through the haze, the darkness, whatever misty barrier seems to settle over the music when you listen to it – the songs, or at least the hooks, on Love Remains reveal themselves. Repetition helps – ‘Can’t See My Own Face’ lifts Beyonce and burrows into your subconscious, while the stop-start bass and drums of ‘Endless Rain’ allows a melody to gradually emerge over a crowd of voices before disappearing again. There’s room for immediacy still – ‘Lover’s Start’, with its camera flashes, is a downbeat pop song and ‘Ready For The World’ shimmers in slow motion, sounding like Burial’s mournful voices dressed to impress, but still just as mournful.
In fact, many of the tracks seem to use atmosphere as the primary hook, rather than melodies – the beautifully sad ‘Suicide Dream 2’ and ‘Suicide Dream 1’ are highlights that tow the line between ambience and song. The unique atmosphere of Love Remains, created through the combination of R’n’B references with nods to ambient and dance textures, can be difficult to enter in to. However, the encompassing, other world it creates becomes strangely addictive over time. It sounds like swimming under the surface of a pool of dark, deep water. Krell’s music is intensely solitary and difficult to emerge from, and he may find himself, unintentionally perhaps, pulling more and more unsuspecting listeners in.